


Something Just Like This (Somebody I Can Kiss)

by IndigoNight



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Deaf Clint Barton, Dorks in Love, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Teenage Dorks, snarky Natasha, tiny assassin natasha is the best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 05:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12977073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoNight/pseuds/IndigoNight
Summary: Bucky and Clint get caught up in a trap meant for Natasha alone and receive an unexpected chance to revisit their teenage years. While the rest of the team track down the bad guys, the boys are left in charge of Tiny Assassin Natasha...They really are the worst babysitters ever.





	Something Just Like This (Somebody I Can Kiss)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sian1359](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian1359/gifts).



> Written for the Winterhawk Reverse Big Bang, based on Sian's [amazing artwork and prompt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980631). 
> 
> Huge thanks to the mods for running this awesome event. Massive thanks to [templeait](http://templeait.tumblr.com/) for the Russian translations. Eternal thanks to [BuckytheDucky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BuckytheDucky/pseuds/BuckytheDucky) and [critter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter) for being such great friends and cheerleaders and listening to all of my whining and rambling. Also thanks to everyone who hangs out in the Winterhawk discord chat for the cheerleading and advice.
> 
> There is some mild underage drinking and making out... sort of... technically?
> 
> All of the Russian dialogue has hover-text translations, and there's a full list of translations at the end.
> 
> Title taken from Something Just Like This by the Chainsmokers (seriously, go listen to it).

No one kidnaps Natasha Romanov.

 Well, they try to - very few actually succeed. And the very, very few who are fortunate enough to not be killed by Natasha Romanov for daring the attempt, they quickly find themselves on the business end of a gun and a bow being held by the two greatest marksmen of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Which is why Clint and Bucky are currently stalking their way through the basement of a condemned former shopping mall on the outskirts of Jersey City, of all places - it’s like these assholes really just wanted to add insult to, well, to insult.  

Clint, of course, is enthusiastically complaining about the commute. “I swear to god,” he mutters, “Nat had better leave us at least a couple of assholes to make the trip worth it.” Bucky grunts in tacit agreement. He takes the low position while Clint stays high and vents a little bit of his frustration by kicking in the service door with more force than really necessary.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Bucky says as they _slice the pie_ down the stairwell and into the next corridor. He’s using that gruff, focused voice he gets when he’s taking a mission personally and isn’t in the mood for joking. Which, frankly, Clint thinks is a little unnecessary. After all, he half expects them to find Natasha painting her nails among a pile of bodies and wanting to know what took them so long - it wouldn’t be the first time.

“Focus up, boys.” Maria’s voice in Clint’s ear is no nonsense and brusque, which is pretty much her normal voice except there’s an extra edge of contained violence to it. “You’ve just got the southwest quadrant left. The boiler room is directly ahead and to your left, which would be a stereotypically likely place to check.”

So far they’ve encountered no one and nothing to actually indicate that some incredibly stupid villains have actually adopted the place as a temporary lair. But Clint trusts Maria’s intel, and even more importantly, he trusts the traffic camera surveillance that JARVIS found tracking the ridiculous sports car that Natasha had somehow been drugged and stuffed into the trunk of to this precise location. The car had still been out in the parking lot, though with a roughly fist sized hole in the trunk, two flat tires, and the expensive leather seats inside slashed to ribbons.

Maria and JARVIS are running surveillance from the quinjet, which is currently parked just shy of on top of the already partially destroyed sports car, while Steve and Sam cover the upper floors of the former mall. Normally, Clint would grumble about Steve and Sam getting the easy job while he and Bucky do the real work, but it has been a long, boring week until now and Clint takes particular exception to people getting the drop on Natasha.

Not that Clint’s actually worried about her. She can more than take care of herself. It’s just so rare that anyone manages to get to her; it’s been a really long time since she’s been taken without that being the plan and Clint’s apparently forgotten how to deal with that calmly. So he kicks in another door and revels a little at the way the sharp tip of his nocked arrow glints in the fluorescent light. 

And then he almost trips over a dead body sprawled across the hallway. He just barely catches himself, swearing, which is echoed by Bucky’s swearing as he almost trips over Clint.

“Watch it,” Bucky growls, but he stops as they both eye the trail of blood leading from the body back to the door at the far end of the hallway, the one with a rusty nameplate reading “boiler room” on it.

“You think she left us any?” Clint asks, eyeing the firmly closed and not broken door ahead of them with some trepidation. If they’re going to go anywhere, mortally wounded people tend to either crawl _toward_ or _away from_ something, and despite the ominous appearance of the heavy metal door, Clint still has his bets on Natasha. 

“I don’t mind picking up scraps,” Bucky answers, moving ahead to take point, “I’m not picky.” Bucky reaches the door, testing the handle cautiously.

Clint leans over Bucky’s shoulder to shout at the door, “Hey Nat, please don’t shoot or stab us, okay?”

Bucky shoot a scowl at him, though it’s significantly less effective with their faces so close together and Clint smirks at him unrepentantly. Bucky rolls his eyes and kicks the door open - or, he tries to and is met with the resistance of several bodies piled up against the inside of the door.  

It takes both Clint and Bucky to shoulder the door open, and sure enough the room is covered in carnage. Clint barely bothers with a cursory sweep of the room - checking to make sure there are no threats left alive to worry about - before focusing on Natasha.

She’s there, sweaty and a little bruised, but alive and moving and looking pissed which makes the cold knot of worry in his chest that Clint had been ignoring relax. She barely spares a glance up at them, and then goes back to picking the lock holding her wrist chained to a machine that is glowing an alarming green color. An alarming green color that is pulsing and coming from a machine that is making a loud revving noise.

“Stay back,” Natasha warns, her voice brisk and only a little strained as her usually nimble fingers fumble with the lock.

“Nat-” Clint starts, pushing past Bucky into the room.

“I said stay back!” she snaps, and the sharp look she gives would normally be terrifying but there’s something about the trail of blood running down the side of her face and the wideness of her eyes that sets off an impending sense of doom in Clint’s chest.

It’s enough to make Clint pause. To make him take another look around. There are a lot of dead bodies in here - which doesn’t surprise Clint - except those dead bodies are wearing a disturbingly familiar kind of uniform. And the glow coming from that machine is getting brighter. And Natasha still hasn’t managed to get out of that cuff. That cuff should have only taken her seconds-

The machine explodes. A wave of neon green light washes over the entire room with physical force and Clint can just barely feel Bucky’s hand in the back of his tactical vest yanking him back before they’re both blown off of their feet.

Clint has no idea how much time passes. He hits the ground _hard_ , and _on top of_ Bucky, which thoroughly knocks the wind out of him. The explosion has completely fucked his hearing aids, leaving him with an aching head and ringing in his ears that drowns out even the faintest possibility of hearing anything else. He can’t be sure whether he rolls off of Bucky himself, or if Bucky shoves him off, but either way he ends up sprawled out on the concrete and struggling to push himself up onto his hands and knees while his whole body shakes.

“Nat?” Clint says, struggling to get his uncooperative body around so that he can see the rest of the room. “Bucky?” If they answer, Clint doesn’t hear it, but he does manage to catch sight of Bucky, who is looking just as wobbly and shell shocked as Clint feels. Except that Bucky’s pale face is miraculously devoid of the scruff that has been pretty much a defining feature since Steve dragged him back to the Tower; actually… “What the fuck happened to your hair?” Clint asks, dropping down to sit on his ass, his legs feeling distant and tingly as they sprawl out in front of him.

Bucky blinks at him, his eyes too big in his abruptly clean shaven face. Slowly he lifts his hand as though to touch the… pompadour that his significantly shorter hair is swept back into. Except he freezes with his hand halfway there- his left hand, which is pale and covered in small scrapes from their fall. It’s on full display, his tactical vest cut to give the metal arm full range of movement, and it definitely isn’t metal any more.

Bucky stares blankly at the hand, blinking dumbly for at least a full minute before he looks up and meets Clint’s eyes. Then he slowly reached down and picks up Clint’s dual-purpose hearing aid and comm unit off of the floor. “What the fuck?” Bucky says, and it’s distant, muffled by the way his ears are still ringing, but Clint _hears_ him.

They stare stupidly at each other for what feels like another eternity, and then both as one turn to look toward where what was the machine is now a smoking wreckage in the middle of the room. And then down to the limp form sprawled out on the floor next to the former-machine; the red-haired form that is roughly a foot and a half shorter than she’s supposed to be. 

“ _What the fuck_ ,” Bucky and Clint repeat in tandem.  

***** 

Bucky… doesn’t know what to feel. He and Clint had gotten Natasha out, back to the quinjet, but since then his brain has refused to hold on to any one thought for more than a few seconds. Except, his brain also seems to be having trouble coming up with thoughts to try and hold on to, so he’s mostly just sitting very still and staring. 

He’s maybe in shock. 

Bruce had been there to greet them as soon as Sam landed the quinjet, and herd them down to the medical lab on the floor below his and Tony’s main labs. Bucky really hates the medical lab, which everyone - including the neurologist that Bucky had thrown into the wall with his metal arm less than a month after Steve had convinced him to come to the Tower and accept the Avengers’ help - insist is perfectly justified and understandable. That doesn’t stop them from making him come here when he needs to deal with something medical, but they have stopped trying to bring in actual doctors to deal with him, relying instead on Bruce and JARVIS to do any hands-on work necessary. He appreciates that, in equal proportion to how much he hates it. But it’s been almost two years since he tried to throw any sort of medical professional into a wall, so there’s that. 

Currently, Bruce has the little thimble-like device that measures Bucky’s pulse, body temperature, and skin conductivity clipped onto his index finger - the right one, out of habit - and a blood pressure cuff around Bucky’s bicep. There’s a distant sort of itching in the back of Bucky’s brain, and he can’t quite stop himself from instinctively flexing and relaxing the muscles in his shoulders and arms every few seconds - an action that would normally be announced to the rest of the room by the mechanical whirring and shifting of metal plates that simulates muscle flexion in the arm that doesn’t actually have muscles. Maybe it’s messed up that Bucky kind of misses the familiar sound, and that the sensation of actual muscles clenching and releasing on his left side is disconcerting enough to almost make him feel nauseous. 

So he’s sitting in the medical lab, being prodded and scanned - by Bruce’s familiar, well-meaning hands, but still - and he hates it. But his brain isn’t flipping itself inside out like it usually does in this situation, and there’s no phantom taste of burning rubber in the back of his throat or screams echoing back to his ears from decades ago. 

He’s definitely in shock. 

Sitting across from Bucky, his legs swinging absently off of the edge of the padded examination table, Clint is receiving the same treatment from Sam. He looks deceptively at ease, which is weird because he hates medical almost as much as Bucky does - a fact which he usually declares as loudly and obnoxiously as possible at every opportunity.  

“This is so weird,” Sam mutters, shaking his head as he packs up the blood pressure cuff.

“As weird as the gray blobby aliens that wanted to set up a trade agreement for g-strings?” Clint asks.

“Nothing is as weird as that,” Bruce says with a slight shudder. He gives Bucky an awkward little half smile and pats him on the shoulder as he removes the devices and heads over to the computer terminal in the corner of the room.

“It is pretty weird though,” Bucky says. He feels a little bit like the entire world is tilting sideway around him every time he catches sight of the pale flesh where he’s only just gotten used to seeing gray metal. It’s distracting and unsettling, so Bucky’s doing his best to avoid looking down at his left side.

Instead he looks across the room at Clint. Which is almost as unsettling, but in a different way, because Clint is _different_ . It isn’t just the way his hair is a little longer, a little shaggier, or the fact that his shoulders aren’t quite as bulky, or even that his bright purple non-combat hearing aids are lying unused and apparently forgotten beside Clint’s hip. It’s that Clint looks _young_ ; nothing dramatic, nothing earth shattering, but the little lines at the corners of Clint’s eyes are gone and there’s a lightness about his face as though he isn’t quite as affected by gravity as he was before.

Which makes sense - or as much sense as any Avengers shit does - because according to JARVIS they’re experiencing a “regression back to the physical state of mid-to-late male adolescence.” For his part, Bucky doesn’t really _feel_ any different - aside from the arm, obviously - but Steve’s been hovering no more than six feet away from Bucky since they got onto the quinjet with that constipated-worried expression on his face that usually means he’s bracing himself for Bucky to fall apart. Steve’s lucky that Bucky has decided it’s equally endearing as it is annoying. 

Of course, Tony choses exactly that moment to breeze in, tie pulled loose, drink in one hand and StarkPad in the other. “First of all, let me just say what a travesty it is that Barnes lost a piece of my engineering genius,” is the first thing out of his mouth as soon as he’s through the door. “It took me eighteen months to finish rebuilding that arm and I’m only halfway through designing the newest updates,” he grouses.

Steve takes half a step forward, away from the wall he’s been holding up, and he looks like one of the blood vessels in his forehead is in mild danger of bursting. “Tony,” he warns, scandalized and offended all at once.

Bucky would roll his eyes if he wasn’t so used to both of their posturing by now. “Not like I did it on purpose,” he mutters, not bothering to look at either one of them but knowing that his offhand petulance will amuse Tony and calm Steve down - as much as Steve ever calms down.

“I’m just saying,” Tony waves his drink dismissively. “Anyway, fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, based on the tests so far, it has been conclusively determined that Barnes and Barton are… still Barnes and Barton.” No one is surprised that Tony is fully aware of the situation, despite the fact that he’s been stuck in some super secret Stark Industries board meeting for three days. “They’re just... junior versions,” Tony adds, eyeing both Clint and Bucky with a dangerous, shit eating glimmer in his eyes; but he’s smart enough not to make any of the no doubt hundreds of jokes at their expense he’s thinking up, at least for now. 

“Not that junior,” Sam says, tilting his head at Clint and Bucky, “How old do we think they are?” Sam also looks like he kind of wants to laugh, but is smart enough that he’ll wait until it’s officially been declared a non-emergency situation and the veins in Steve’s forehead stop pulsing.

“Bucky’s at least eighteen,” Steve says. He’s slunk back against the wall, his arms crossed tight over his chest and shoulders hunched in in a way that makes his under armor shirt almost look like it actually fits him. He’s still wearing the bottom half of his uniform, and the shield is leaning against the wall at his feet; he’s still tense, still on alert.

Bucky isn’t quite sure why Steve’s so upset by this situation when everyone else - including Bucky himself - seem to be hovering between confusion and amusement. But he sets that aside for now, focusing on the question that is no doubt about to be on everyone’s lips. “How’d you know?” Bucky asks, beating the others to it as he frowns at Steve. 

It has the unexpected effect of distracting Steve from his overprotective looming, and suddenly he looks strangely flustered, shoulders hunching up even more like he’s trying to sink into himself. “The uh, scar, over your eyebrow.” He gestures vaguely toward Bucky’s face and then points to his own right eyebrow. “You got that on your eighteenth birthday. You, uh, you got hit with a… rock.”

Bucky reaches up automatically to where Steve had pointed, feeling a thin, dimpled line just over his eyebrow, only a couple of centimeters long and barely noticeable. He rubs the spot absently, feeling his whole face crinkle up as he tries to reach for the memory; it’s been years now since he was wiped by the chair, and while he’s mostly put the jagged edges of his broken brain back together, he’s had to accept that some memories are probably gone forever. He’s gotten back most of the pre-war stuff, though, so he should be able to find his eighteenth birthday in there somewhere… he just can’t always access the right memories when he wants to.

“The scar, uh, it disappeared after Azzano.” Steve keeps talking, his voice a low mutter aimed at the floor as he sinks back into the maudlin like he so often does. “I didn’t really think about until… later.” The muscle in Steve’s jaw flexes and everyone in the room subtly avert their eyes and don’t comment on the gaps in Steve’s sentences - they’re all used to it by now. It’s been coming up less and less, since Bucky’s come so far in his recovery and they all eventually ganged up on Steve to convince him to start getting the therapy he so desperately needs. Steve’s probably never going to fully forgive himself for not trying harder to find Bucky after the train though, no matter how many times they talk about it. 

“Azzano…” Bucky repeats, distracted from his quest for the memory of his eighteenth birthday as something occurs to him. His head jerks up and he looks from Steve to Bruce to Tony. “I don’t have the serum any more, do I?” he asks.

Bruce fidgets with his glasses and clears his throat. “There are no signs of it in your blood work, no,” he confirms, the corner of one eye twitching slightly as though he’s expecting shouting.

But Bucky doesn’t know how to feel about that, and Steve’s back to just looking constipated. So Bucky nods absently and mumbles an acknowledging, “huh.” He’s still rubbing at the scar on his eyebrow, something twitching in the back of his brain and if he just sits still and waits long enough it will- ah! Bucky has to try very hard not to laugh as the memory of his eighteenth birthday finally shakes itself loose. “... You threw a brick at my face!” he declares, aiming for accusatory when he looks to Steve for confirmation, but it’s striking him as inexplicably hilarious and he doubts he’s containing his glee very well.

Jerked out of his maudlin dwelling, the tips of Steve’s ears turn red and he ducks his head with a distinctly chagrined expression. “You were supposed to catch it,” he mutters defensively, which only makes Bucky want to laugh even more. Mentally, he tucks that memory away in his file of ‘amusing anecdotes to torment Steve with’ and everyone else in the room looks relieved by the break in tension.

“Why would you-” Sam starts, squinting at Steve, but then he shakes his head dismissively, “nevermind. I don’t want to know.” 

“So then Clint is-” Bruce starts, getting them back on track with his speculative science voice.

“Eighteen. Yup, I’m eighteen too. Definitely eighteen,” Clint says, but his face crinkles up in a wince by the third word, no doubt fully aware that his words had definitely come out too fast and too eager.

“So, Clint’s a minor now,” Sam declares, back to looking gleeful about it.

“How do you know?” Bruce asks Clint, valiantly trying to stay clinical. “I mean, JARVIS estimated you both to be in your late teens, but to narrow it down more than that without some specific identifying mark-” Bruce stops and tilts his head, squinting at Clint expectantly.  

Everyone else is staring at Clint expectantly too - even Tony has looked up from the Starkpad that he’s been poking at - and now it’s Clint’s ears that are turning red as he fidgets uncontrollably. Bucky, who is feeling a rare instance of alignment with Sam right now, sort of loves how both Steve and Clint’s pale complexions prevent them from hiding much of anything. 

“As it happens,” Clint says, his voice starting out stiff like he’s trying to maintain some dignity, but quickly devolving into an embarrassed mutter, “on my eighteenth birthday, there… may have been… an unfortunate tattooing incident…” He’s staring determinedly at a spot somewhere to the left of Bucky’s head and sort of looks like he wants to sink through the floor and die. “It was shitty to begin with, and I got it removed a couple of years later. So, I’m either twenty-four, or…” 

“Seventeen then, noted,” Tony says, not even trying to contain his grin. “JARVIS, add that to Barton’s file and start searching all available databases for pictures.”  

“Aw, no,” Clint mutters, nearly a whine as he sinks his face into his hands. 

“But are they… okay?” Steve asks, and Bucky watches him draw himself up to his full height and visibly put on his Responsible Captain America face. “Are there any other effects? Is it going to get… worse? JARVIS, have you finished the full risk assessment yet?” 

“As far as I can tell they’re stable,” Bruce says, looking up from the terminal he’s been typing at. “They aren’t, uh, regressing further. Their vitals are within normal range.” 

“I was able to pick up some trace amounts of radiation when you first arrived, but it appears non-harmful and has nearly dissipated now,” JARVIS reports. 

“Wait, radiation?” Steve looks up, going stiff again.

Clint just shrugs. “He did say non-harmful,” he points out. “And, I mean, it’s probably no worse than the other shit we get exposed to, like… all the time.”

“I haven’t been able to match the source yet,” Bruce says distractedly, focusing back on the terminal. “But there’s something familiar about it…” he trails off, shifting automatically to make room for Tony who starts practically leaning on Bruce’s shoulder to get a good look at the screen.

“What about Natasha?” Bucky asks. He can’t seem to find it in himself to feel too concerned about vague, unidentified radiation - Clint has a point, after all. But Natasha… Bucky is feelings strangely calm about his own transformation, he is feeling distinctly less calm about Natasha shrinking on him. 

She’s in the next room over, way too small and way too fragile looking, tucked up in a hospital bed. She’s easily visible - the “smart glass” wall that divides the rooms currently set to transparent - but there isn’t much of her to see from this angle except for a mass of red hair and a skinny pale arm lying on top of the sheets. Bucky doesn’t want to look at her though. Natasha has never been shy about using her slim size to her own advantage, but there’s something _wrong_ about her being _so tiny_ \- there’s something jagged scratching at the back of his brain every time he looks at her, and if that’s a memory he _does not want it_.

“Is she okay?” Bucky asks, if only to distract himself from whatever it is that he doesn’t want to remember.

“Well, there’s no trauma showing up on the brain scans,” Sam says, rubbing the back of his neck as he squints toward Natasha’s bed.

“Which really just means that we don’t know why she’s still unconscious,” Tony adds, unhelpfully. “But it’s probably connected to the… whatever that was in that bomb.” 

“Great,” Bucky mutters, “super comforting, thanks.”

Clint runs a hand through his hair, which is already sticking up at all angles and tugs distractedly at his ears. “Uh, how old is she? I mean, she’s a lot… smaller than Bucky and I are?” 

“I estimate Agent Romanov to be between seven and nine years old,” JARVIS answers. 

Bucky’s busy trying to reconcile that, to think about Natasha being an actual _child_ , when Clint abruptly starts sniggering. He muffles it with his hands, but it’s high pitched and edged by just a hint of hysteria and draws the attention of everyone in the room. 

“Uh, Barton, care to share with the class?” Tony asks, eyebrow raising. 

It take Clint a minute, the tips of his fingers pressing against his eyelids before he gives in and drops his hands. “She is going to be so pissed when she wakes up,” he giggles.

Bucky stares at him blankly, blinking a couple of times. But then his brain provides him with an image of the look Natasha gives Clint everytime he does something supremely stupid, except on the tiny version of her face, and sudden there’s uncontrollable laughter bubbling up in his chest and he’s sniggering right along with Clint.  

It’s inappropriate, and hysterical, and Bucky can’t even really explain why it’s so funny except that it is. Just when he thinks he’s got control of himself again he makes the mistake of looking at Clint, who is similarly struggling to contain his laughter only for them both to burst out into a renewed fit of giggles. 

Everyone else in the room is staring at them with varying ranges of bemusement and concern. Steve has moved a couple of steps away from the wall toward Bucky, and he looks worried despite the uncertainly amused twitch of his lips. 

“Oh my god, she’s going to murder us all,” Clint giggle helplessly, clutching his stomach and half folding forward on himself.  

“Good thing she already has a stock of small knives,” Bucky chuckles. It’s bizarre, suddenly Bucky feels overwhelmingly lightheaded and giddy for no good reason but he just can’t stop. 

“Okay, it isn’t _that_ funny,” Sam says, eyeing them both with growing concern. 

“Sorry,” Clint says weakly, not sounding it at all as he covers his mouth with his hand and coughs into it.

“I do hate to interrupt,” JARVIS says, sounding even drier than usual and Bucky has a feeling that JARVIS is, in fact, not sorry at all. “But Agent Romanov appears to be waking up.” 

In the next room Natasha has jerked upright in the bed, her hair a tangled red mass around her head as she looks around wildly, panic in every line of her body.

They stop laughing abruptly. 

*****

Steve had been closest to the door, which means he’s the first one into Natasha’s room.

“Natasha, it’s okay, you’re safe,” Steve says, his hands up placatingly. He is, at least, smart enough not to get too close, stopping half way across the room.

Clint, having rushed headlong after Steve, skids to a halt in the doorway so abruptly that Bucky stumbles into his back and they’re both only barely saved from falling over by grabbing for the door frame. Despite Bucky practically leaning against his back, Clint can’t bring himself to move further into the room - he’s too busy staring at the unsettling but uncomfortably familiar sight in front of them.

Inexplicably, and yet unsurprisingly, in the time it had taken them to rush out to the hallway and then into Natasha’s room, she’d somehow acquired two scalpels and is clutching one in each hand. She’s crouched on the floor next to the bed, looking horrifyingly small in a hospital gown that’s far too large for her tiny frame. Yet her eyes are bright, sharp and accessing as her gaze flicks around the room and her knuckles are white around the handles of the scalpels. "Где я?" she says, her voice disconcertingly high pitched but the Russian words still sound harsh and stiff.

Steve jerks slightly, as though taken aback, and it occurs to Clint - with the distant part of his brain that isn’t _completely_ freaking out - that Steve doesn’t speak much Russian. Steve recovers quickly, however, and takes a step closer, his hands still up in an attempt to be reassuring. " Всё в порядке,” he says, the words stiff and awkward but his accent flawless. Steve doesn’t know much Russian, but there are a handful of phrases that he knows _perfectly_ , and Clint can’t help the reflexive glance over his shoulder to see the way Bucky’s mouth tightens at the all too familiar words. " Мы твои друзья."

Natasha does not look reassured. "Вы кто такие?" she demands. She shuffles back a bit, shying away from Steve’s advance and brandishing her scalpels in a ready stance.

"Отставить." Bucky says, startling all of them as he shoves his way past Clint and into the room. There’s something tight in his expression, almost pained, and his voice is stern, leaving no room for argument.

Natasha eyes him, accessing. Her gaze sweeps over his disheveled hair and the ill-fitting scrubs that both Bucky and Clint had changed into when they got back to the Tower - Steve wouldn’t let them go shower and change properly, and Bruce needed easier access to run his tests than their armor allowed. When she finishes her assessment her lip curls up in an expression that is mildly disdainful and she focuses back on Steve. "Каков приказ?" she says.

"Отставить." Bucky repeats firmly, emphasizing the words with a gesture. "Убери ножи."

Natasha’s gaze flicks from Bucky to Steve again, and she looks distinctly unimpressed.

Clint is… staring. It’s too much for him to process at first. A little disorientation when Natasha first woke up would have been understandable, but he’d expected her to be annoyed by her sudden change in stature. He’d expected to tease her and for her to endure it in her usual fashion - by rolling her eyes and threatening his life. He had not expected her to be speaking Russian and have no idea who they are.

He can’t help flashing back to when he’d first brought her to SHIELD. She’d been half wild then too, but she’d done a much better job of masking it behind a facade of cold indifference. Of course, she’d been a fully grown adult then.

She’s not a fully grown adult now - maybe that should have been immediately apparent when she didn’t recognize Steve, but in Clint’s defense, it has been a very long day. She’s not an adult, she’s a child. She’s a small child, and when Natasha was a small child the only thing she’d known about the world was what the Red Room taught her. There’s nothing funny about this situation any more. Clint stares at her, so small but so lethal - because she will use those scalpels, given the slightest chance she won’t hesitates to eviscerate them all, just like the Red Room taught her. It sets off a whole messy cascade in Clint’s mind, all the little things that Natasha has ever told him about her childhood, all the habits she’d had to break, all of the nightmares that continued to haunt her even years at she’d settled into life with SHIELD.

"Спрячь когти, паучок. Они здесь не нужны.” Clint blurts. He doesn’t quite push past Bucky and Steve - he’s not stupid enough to crowd the tiny, terrified assassin - but he moves up to stand with them. The phrase feels awkward on his tongue, floating up in his mind from a distant memory. It had been years ago, back when the concept of trusting was still a fragile, new thing for both of them. They’d been holed up in a cold, damp drainage tunnel somewhere on the outskirts of Riga waiting for their extraction team to arrive. Cold and bleeding mildly, they’d been curled up close, Natasha tucked up beneath Clint’s arm, and they’d whispered to each other secrets of the past. Natasha had told him about a man, a lab tech maybe, who’d promised to take her away from the Red Room, to give her a life. He had friends, he’d said, who could help, and he gave her a passphrase so that she’d know when she was safe.

Clint just hopes he remembered the phrase right. Hopes that _she’d_ remembered the phrase right when she’d told him. That whenever Natasha thinks she is right now is after the man had told her the plan, but before he’d been discovered, before she’d been forced to put a bullet through the man’s skull. He hopes that she believes him.

She squints at Clint, looking distinctly unimpressed - which, given that Clint is currently barefoot, wearing poorly fitted scrubs, standing in between Captain America and the Winter Soldier, and facing down _the_ Black Widow, he accepts as fair. 

"Гнездо сожгли?" she asks, and Clint’s heart breaks at how tense, how cautious she sounds, but worst of all is the barely there note of hope around the edges of her words.

"Дотла." he answers firmly. "Здесь ты в безопасности."

*****

Okay, so technically Clint lied; the nest isn’t quite as burned to the ground as they all believed. Which is actually the source of the whole issue here. But Clint figures that calming down the tiny assassin and not getting them all violently murdered is a good enough justification for half truths.

Natasha relinquishes her scalpels, and the tension is effective defused. Sam appears with a bundle of child-sized clothes - presumably procured by JARVIS, because JARVIS is the best and thinks of things like that. 

“Why doesn’t she recognize us?” Steve demands, as soon as Natasha has taken the clothes and retreated into the bathroom.  

“No, actually, this makes sense,” Bucky says, a thoughtful expression on his face. He glances sideways at Clint, and Clint nods, fairly certain they’re on the same page. 

“Red Room fuckers,” Clint mutters in agreement.

“You said before that you thought those guys were Red Room,” Steve says, alternating between glancing from Clint to Bucky and shooting warily looks toward the bathroom door. They’re all talking with lowered voices, and Steve isn’t the only one who keeps checking the bathroom door; caught somewhere between cautious and guilty, all of them are keenly aware that Natasha could come back out at any moment.

Bucky grits his teeth, his lip curling back. “They have a certain look,” he says darkly; Steve, wisely, doesn’t question that further. 

“No, but Bucky’s right,” Clint says, nodding and hating every second of it. “What would be the point of making her small if she’s still, you know, _her_ . Grown up Nat defected, but _actually_ making her a kid again-”

“Makes her easier to control,” Sam says, nodding slowly as he catches on and looking just as nauseous as Clint feels. 

“But neither of your memories are affected,” Bruce points out. He has his arms crossed, shoulders hunch in a way that makes his sweater look even more oversized as he leans into their little huddle. He’s only just barely come into the room, having wisely chosen to stay well out of scalpel range until Natasha was somewhat calmed down.

“We weren’t supposed to be there,” Clint points out. 

“And we were further away from the… bomb, thing,” Bucky adds. “Natasha was right next to it.”

“No, she was _tied_ to it, she was touching it,” Clint corrects.

“Makes sense why Bucky and I aren’t as young as she is too,” Bucky points out, nodding seriously.

“Effect based on proximity,” Bruce surmises, nodding thoughtfully. “It makes as much sense as any other hypothesis I’ve come up with.” 

“Nothing about any of this makes sense,” Sam complains. “I have put up with a lot of weird science since joining up with you guys. But if someone’s figured out how to de-age people, why are they still bothering with super villainy? Why not just patent it and sell it to aging millionaires?”

No one gets the chance to answer though, because Natasha chooses that moment to come back out of the bathroom. It’s sort of a relief, actually. The clothes JARVIS had ordered for her a pretty basic, just jeans and a baggy t-shirt, a pair of shiny sneakers, and she’d managed to smooth her hair back enough to tie it up in a ponytail; just like that, she no longer looks like a tiny, scared version of _Natasha_ , now she’s just a kid, just like the thousands of other kids that Clint sees walking down the street every day. It makes Clint’s brain stop feeling like it’s trying to do gymnastics in zero gravity, and he hadn’t realized just how much it was tripping him out until he manages to relax a little. 

“That’s better,” Clint says, a little too loudly and his mouth is definitely doing the thing where it talks without consent from his brain. “You’re on the cutting edge of fashion now.” 

And okay, Natasha’s _you’re-a-weirdo_ look is no less powerful in miniature. She scoots slowly into the room, sticking close to the wall as she eyes them all warily. Her gaze keeps returning to Steve, watching him the most closely, and another distant memory floats to the surface of Clint’s mind: _always know who the Commander is. The Commander is the one to watch._ Well, her chain-of-command assessment skills are intact, he supposes.

Clint doesn’t know what to do with himself. He ends up hovering near the edge of the room with Steve while Sam convinces Natasha to sit back on the bed and let him check her over while Bucky translates. She’s visibly tense, but consents to the blood pressure cuff and the pulse monitor without a fuss. She lets Sam flash the light into her eyes, check her ears, and tap her knee to check her reflexes; she looks affronted when she’s told to stick out her tongue as say ‘ah’ but she does it anyway. There isn’t a whole lot of point to it, it’s not like she has a _cold_ or something, but Sam and Bruce had done it to Clint and Bucky too, and Clint has a feeling that it’s more about feeling the need to do _something_ scientifically medical, something routine, just to grasp at some fragile sense of control and normalcy.  

Meanwhile, Bruce hadn’t exactly fled the room when Natasha came back out, but he had retreated back to the next room over where he and Tony are having some kind of conversation that involves a lot of emphatic gesturing while surrounded by Tony’s glowing holographic screens. They’re easily visible through the transparent smart-glass, but the speakers between the rooms are muted, and while Clint _could_ try reading their lips he isn’t going to bother; Natasha is his priority, and if Tony and Bruce come up with something relevant they’ll share with the class eventually.

"Где мы?" Natasha asks, drawing Clint’s full attention back to her. Her eyes are on Steve - when they aren’t sweeping around the rest of the room or looking where Sam has told her to look - and her expression is mildly curious but her eyes are sharp and accessing. 

Bucky falters for some reason, his gaze going to Steve too. Clint steps up without thinking about it; "В Нью-Йорке," he answers. "Красной Комнаты здесь нет. Твои операторы не найдут тебя.” Which, technically, is mostly true on account of the fact that, as far as Clint knows, all of her hold handlers are definitively and violently dead. Whoever is behind the new resurgence of the Red Room and this particular circumstance, on the other hand, is a little more complicated. However, the Tower might be ostentatious in true Stark style, but it’s also a literal fortress that has been built and rebuilt to withstand alien invasions and literal pagan gods, so Clint’s reasonably confident in making promises without splitting hairs about it. 

Natasha’s gaze flicks briefly to Clint before moving back to Steve, but she doesn’t get the chance to respond. 

“My friends, I apologize for my lateness,” Thor’s voice sweeps into the room preceding his swirling cape and the strong scent of ozone. “I was with my Lady Jane and the message was delayed in reaching us.”

“Oh yeah, heads up, Thor’s here,” Tony says belatedly over the speakers.

“Dude, you really need to get a phone,” Sam mutters, packing up the medical equipment.

Thor ignores both of them. “I am pleased to see that everyone is in good health, if...not unchanged.” Thor’s gaze sweeps the room, lingering on Clint and Bucky for a moment before resting on Natasha. Natasha, for her part, is watching Thor like he might be a rabid bear and her hand is drifting toward the waistband of her jeans, but no scalpels have actually appeared yet.

“Lady Natasha-” Thor starts, taking a step toward her, apparently oblivious to Natasha’s tension based on his smile. Clint’s half stepping in between Natasha and Thor automatically, brain starting to list situation diffusion methods and contingencies that will hopefully avoid anyone getting stabbed. Distractedly Clint feels Bucky stepping up beside him, presumably following the same train of thought; but it’s Tony who gets there first.

“Hey Sparky,” he calls over the speakers, waving beckoningly through the glass wall. “We need your expertise over here.”

That draws Steve’s attention, and since Sam’s finished examining Natasha he follows, and Clint isn’t about to be left out. So they end up all trooping out into the hallway and back into the next room over. Bucky throws a "Никуда не уходи," at Natasha over his over his shoulder and her eyes narrow but she obeys.

Over in the science room, Bruce and Tony have an array of floating screens covered in data and charts that Clint isn’t going to bother trying to understand. Thor, however, is looming over Bruce’s shoulder and seems deeply engrossed in a series of charts.

“Yes, I agree,” Thor says gravely, “the energy signatures do match. I believe I maybe be able to offer an explanation for our friends’ youthful troubles.” 

“We’re waiting?” Sam prompts, shooting a glance back at Natasha. She’s sitting primly on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap, but she’s watching them through the glass with laser focus.

“The radiation I mentioned before,” Bruce says, gesturing to the graphs. “Well, turns out they’re very similar to the readings we got from-” he pauses, fidgeting with his glasses, “from the Tesseract. And Loki’s Scepter.”

Steve takes a breath, the muscle in his jaw twitching. “So it’s something Asgardian?”

“No,” Thor shakes his head. “The Infinity Gems are as old as the universe itself and far beyond Asgard’s skills.”

“Aren’t those the ridiculously powerful world-ending stones that no one is supposed to use?” Sam asks, eyebrows raised.

Thor nods. “The stones are meant to be scattered across the universe. The fact that three have found their way to Midgard in so short a span of time is concerning.”

“But sort of beside the point right now,” Clint interrupts. “More importantly, can you fix us?” 

“Well, if the stone did this, we probably need the stone to undo it,” Bruce muses. 

“There wasn’t a stone at the site,” Steve says, a little too quickly.

“That does not surprise me. To wield the power of the stone on such a limited scope would be far beyond any mortal.” Thor crosses his massive arms as he surveys Bruce’s screen, and Clint would feel offend, but frankly who is he kidding? “Steve, you told me of how during your Great War, your enemy found a way to extract energy from the Tesseract to power his weapons?”

Steve blinks and nods. “Yeah, yeah. They were like batteries or something, at least that’s what Howard said.” 

“So they might not _actually_ have the stone?” Bucky asks. “I mean, if-” he falters for a second, his face twisting then forces himself to press on, “If Red Skull and Zola could do it, someone else may have figured out how too.”

“Keep an eye out for any miraculously youthful celebrities and politicians,” Sam mutters, sounding prematurely vindicated.

“So, not only do we have to chase down the asshats who actually did this, we might also need to hunt down someone using an ancient all-powerful rock to sell magical de-aging pills?” Tony asks. “Super. JARVIS, clear my schedule.” 

“We also need to figure out how to reverse the process… if that’s even possible,” Bruce adds. 

“Well, you can start by asking the group of Red Room resurgents currently hiding out in Peru,” Maria says, breezing in without so much as looking up from her StarkPad.

“Excellent,” Clint says, pushing himself away from the wall before they can get bogged down in any more discussion. “Let me just get my pants and-”

“You’re not coming,” Steve says, looking startled by the suggestion.

“The hell we aren’t,” Bucky growls - it’s weirdly less effective than it usually is, and Bucky can’t quite seem to muster the murder eyes he usually employs with that tone of voice.

Steve shakes his head. “No. You’re compromised, both of you. You’re off field duty until we get this fixed.”

“Bullshit,” Clint complains.

“Someone should stay here with Natasha, anyway,” Sam interjects reasonably, not that Clint - or Bucky, based on his expression - is in the mood to listen to reason. 

“JARVIS can watch Natasha,” Clint argues. “You are not leaving us behind!”

“You know, I am a very busy man, I don’t really have time to stand around and have a ‘yeah-huh’ ‘nuh-huh’ fight right now,” Tony says, waving a hand that serves to both brush away the argument and shut down the floating holographic screens. “Sorry boys, you’re grounded. Everyone else, let’s go.”

“Fuck all of you!” Clint declares, throwing his arms in the air and electing to storm out. He resolutely does not think about how much he sounds like a teenager. 

*****

Clint stares in dumbfounded confusion at the blinking red light under his hand. “JARVIS?” he says, doing his absolute best to keep his voice level and polite. “Why isn’t the door accepting my biometric scan?”  

“My apologies, Agent Barton,” JARVIS says, which really tells Clint all he needs to know because he’d talked JARVIS out of the formality of titles a year ago and the _Agent Barton_ only comes out when JARVIS is delivering bad news. “Per my protocols I cannot allow a minor onto the shooting range without the supervision of an adult.”

Clint’s entire body twitches and he just barely resists the urge to slam his head against the aforementioned door. “But I’m not _actually_ a minor,” he whines.

“Biologically speaking-”

“Oh fuck biology!” Clint shouts. “It’s all a bullshit social construct anyway.” He slams his hand against the biometric reader again, fruitlessly, he knows, but it makes him feel a little bit better anyway.

It’s barely twenty minutes since the rest of the team flew off for Peru and Clint is still bristling with indignation at being left behind; this age regression thing is getting distinctly less funny. Clint knows - rationally, in some distant underused part of his brain - that he’s overreacting, but this whole situation is _really not fair_.  

He steps away from the door, takes a slow, steadying breath, then tilts his face up toward the ceiling and shouts with all of the air in his lungs, “Stark I swear to god I know you think this is funny but I am going-!” 

“Barton?” Clint cuts his threatening - well, JARVIS really, since Tony is halfway to South America - short to blink at Bucky, who is standing at the end of the hallway with his hands sunk deep into his pockets and a distinctly amused expression on his face. “Are you… okay?” There’s a little wrinkle between Bucky’s eyebrows, and he almost sounds genuinely concerned.

“No, I’m-” Clint starts, but then stops as realization hits. “You’re eighteen!” he announces with what is perhaps, in retrospect, and overly exuberant point toward Bucky. “JARVIS! JARVIS, open the door! Bucky’s eighteen!” He turns his best approximation of a wheedling grin toward Bucky. “Hey, what do you say, Buck? How about some target practice? You and me.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose. “Don’t call me Buck,” he says. “It’s weird when anyone besides Steve does it.”

“That did not answer my question,” Clint points out, barely resisting the urge to cross his arms. 

“Oh, well,” Bucky hesitates, ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck - a second later he shakes his head slightly as though he’s forgotten that his hair isn’t long enough to fall in front of his face when he does that any more. It’s weird, and sort of unsettling, that for the first time Bucky sort of actually _looks_ eighteen. Overall, the age regression hadn’t changed him that much, besides the hair and the arm, but there’s something subtle, something just a little bit softer around the corners of his eyes and the edges of his mouth.

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Clint insists, determined to ignore the inexplicable little flutter that’s started up in the pit of his stomach. Clint has a whole arsenal of convincing arguments and puppy dog eyes - which, granted, by this point are pretty much ineffective on everyone in the Tower besides Thor and occasionally Bruce - but before he can try a smaller face peeks out from behind Bucky’s hip and Clint stops short.

“We were trying to figure out something to do,” Bucky says. “But I don’t think the shooting range is a good idea.” 

“Riiight,” Clint says, drawing out the ‘i’ to buy himself an extra couple of seconds to think. It’s hard when he’s staring down Natasha’s tiny, inquisitive face. “The gym!” Both Natasha and Bucky startle a little, and Clint reflects absently that he should maybe practice re-learning voice modulation. “I mean, the obstacle course it basically a really big jungle gym, right? Kids like those.”

Bucky frowns, tilting his head. “Uh, the obstacle course has robots that shoot lasers.” 

“Well we can turn those off,” Clint huffs dismissively. 

Bucky considers, then looks down at Natasha, who is looking up at Bucky expectantly. Then Bucky shrugs. “Sure, I guess. We could do a little climbing or something. Звучит неплохо, а?"

 Natasha grins up at Bucky in a way that makes Clint feel vaguely like he should be strapping on some body armor, but then they’re all trooping off toward the gym and Clint just goes with it. When they reach the gym, Natasha’s entire face lights up; not that Clint can really blame her, ‘gym’ is a bit of an understatement. It’s a massive open space that takes up a full two stories of the building, the bottom level subdivided into sections that include traditional cardio and weight machines, a sparring ring, a rock climbing wall, a wide range of gymnastics equipment, and in the corner a small ballet studio. The top level is a complex obstacle course of twisting rope nets, narrow beams, and a whole variety of equipment that Clint would rather climb on than name.

But Clint doesn’t think that any amount of climbing or dangling from a rope two stories up will be effective in bleeding off the excessive amount of energy buzzing through his body. Natasha, on the other hand, makes a beeline for the rock climbing wall on the far side of the room. Bucky trails after her, looking somewhere between anxious and bemused. 

"Я залезу до потолка!" Natasha declares, her high voice echoing in the vast room.

"Конечно, залезешь." Clint reassures her, trailing after both of them. When they reach the wall Natasha makes a grab for the rocks - little plastic ledges are, of course, not good enough for Tony Stark, the wall is actually some kind of high-tech polymer thing that Tony designed to actually look and feel like rock but can also be changed and shifted by JARVIS to adjust the difficulty level. "Погоди минутку,” Clint interrupts, catching her before she can climb out of reach. "Надо страховку надеть.” he says. The rock wall is outfitted with lines and harnesses, but since half the team can fly, several of them have enhanced healing factors, and there is very little self preservation between the entire lot of them, Clint’s pretty sure the harnesses have never actually been used before.

Natasha blinks at him, looking both confused and put out, but she holds still obligingly while Clint and Bucky fit her into a harness and attach it to the line that JARVIS helpfully extends down from the top of the wall for them. It takes a few extra minutes to cinch the harness tight enough for Natasha’s miniaturized body, by which time she begins to fidget impatiently. Finally satisfied, Clint takes a step back and waves his hand in a permissive gestures. “Go to town,” he mutters, pointlessly since as soon as he’d let go of her Natasha had begun scrambling up the wall.

Bucky and Clint stand shoulder to shoulder, unconsciously mirroring each other with crossed arms and craned necks as they watch Natasha gleefully climb up the sheer face of the wall. “She’s good,” Bucky comments distractedly, smiling a little.

“Not surprising,” Clint answers. But he’s starting to fidget himself and the buzzing under his skin is becoming increasingly distracting. “So, um, she’s all set. Do you… want to spar?” he offers hopefully, glancing sideways at Bucky. 

Bucky blinks, hesitating. Clint’s never sparred with Bucky one-on-one before - since Bucky had accidentally thrown Steve _through_ a double reinforced wall during the early days of his recovery at the Tower, he’d refused to spar with anyone who didn’t have enhanced strength and durability to match him. “I… guess we could,” Bucky says slowly, like it’s a revelation that without the serum and metal arm it is actually an option now.  

  
“Yes!” Clint fist pumps the air and heads for the sparring ring before Bucky has a chance to change his mind.

Bucky looks slightly wary as he follows Clint, ducking through the ropes to climb up onto the padded floor of the boxing-style ring. “Do you think we still have, you know, all of our skills?” he asks, pacing around the edge of the ring slowly. 

“Probably?” Clint says, simultaneously shrugging and rolling his shoulders to loosen them. “I mean, I still remember learning how to fight?”

“But muscle memory-” Bucky’s face is scrunched up contemplatively, but Clint doesn’t want to risk him getting too distracted.

“Let’s find out,” Clint insists, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Come at me, bro!”

Bucky’s face goes from contemplative, to bemused, to challenging in the beat of a few seconds. He snorts and moves into position, his fists raising

Clint doesn’t hesitate, diving right in with a sweeping kick that forces Bucky to dodge back several steps. Then the game is on. Clint determines that they probably have not lost any of their skills, given that Bucky manages to land him on his ass in about five second flat. But after Bucky pulls Clint back to his feet and they start a second around, and then a third, and a fourth, they manage to fall into a good rhythm. Each time Clint lasts a little bit longer; without the serum Bucky is not only less overpoweringly strong, but he’s also stuck at normal human speed. After so long with the advantage of the metal arm, Bucky favors his left side and relies a little too much on brute force. Clint starts to find the gaps in Bucky’s defense, the little hitches where Bucky’s reflexes don’t quite kick in like he’s expecting them too.  

By the time they’ve been going for twenty minutes they’re moving in almost perfect sync as they trade blows back and forth. They’re both dripping in sweat and winded, but Clint can’t bring himself to care. It’s thrilling, the perfect back and forth, their skills balanced enough to constantly keep each other on their toes. Neither one of them are above fighting dirty and the sparring match regularly devolves into grappling on the floor. 

“I win again,” Bucky declares, stradling Clint’s back with one of Clint’s arms twisted at an angle that’s just on the edge of pain. Clint can just see Bucky’s face with the eye that isn’t smashed against the sweat damp floor; Bucky’s face is flushed and his eyes are damn near _sparkling_. His hair is a disordered mess, still long enough for the strands to fall into his eyes and stick to his forehead in damp curls.

Clint’s body is a livewire, so flushed with adrenaline that he’s dizzy with it. He’s fully bracing himself to kick Bucky’s leg out from under him and reverse the pin, except that Bucky looks so _fucking happy_ and it is completely distracting. Christ, Bucky looks _young_ and _carefree_ , the grim lines around his mouth and eyes replaced by the crinkles of laugh lines as he beams triumphantly down at Clint.

And suddenly Clint is relieved that he’s face down on the mat, because he is abruptly and almost painfully reminded of exactly what it’s like to be a seventeen year old boy. His whole brain dissolves into a litany of _fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck_ ; and at least three of those fucks are in reference to how horrifying and humiliating this situation has the potential to be. But before Clint can even begin to rally his brain into coming up with a way out of this situation that won’t result in Bucky either murdering him or laughing him into an early grave, they’re interrupted.

"Теперь я," Natasha announces, her childish voice pitched even higher with excitement as she scrambles up into the ring. She rolls under the lowest rope and comes up in a ready crouch with her fists up. She’s still got the climbing harness tightened around her waist and thighs, but she’s hardly broken a sweat and her eyes are glittering with excitement.

Bucky laughs, releasing Clint and rolling away from him. "Хочешь драться, котенок?" he asks, grinning at Natasha’s eager nod.

"Я тебя уложу,” she declares, all perky confidence as she bounces to her feet. "Я самая сильная!"

“Да ты что? Ну, посмотрим.” Bucky laughs. "Только страховку снимем,” he adds, un-cinching the climbing harness and tossing it aside.

Clint, for his part, crawls out of the way. His teenage problem is vanishing quickly with the reminder that Natasha is in the room, but he’s still feeling winded and achy after going twelve rounds with the Junior Soldier.

Bucky is almost alarmingly good with tiny Nat; even though Clint vaguely remembers Steve telling stories about helping Bucky take care of his little sisters, so it really shouldn’t be surprising. He easily draws her into a playful game, ducking and dodging away from her on his knees while they circle each other in the middle of the ring. Natasha’s grinning, fierce and sharp between her teeth as she throws punches and kicks at Bucky in rapid succession. Bucky’s laughing, light and easy, preferring to dodge out of the way rather than actually block her blows, keeping them constantly moving.

It’s fun to watch them, both clearly enjoying themselves. Natasha is light and fast, and it doesn’t take her long to have Bucky on the defensive, pushing him back with every new kick. Bucky has to start actually blocking her blows, knocking her fists and feet aside carefully with his forearms. But then she gets in a lucky kick aimed at Bucky’s hip, throwing him off balance, and follows it immediately with a leg sweep that knocks Bucky flat on his ass. She makes a sound of victory that’s almost like a snarl and _pounces_ , leaping on top of Bucky to pin him down. Bucky recovers himself, twisting to throw her off and pinning her down instead. Her eyes flash, her bared teeth sharp and white as she struggles against Bucky’s grip. She wiggles furiously, kicking out to throw Bucky off. Clint knows all too well that Bucky could keep her pinned with one hand behind his back if he’d really wanted to, but when she shoves against his shoulder he lets the force of it roll him over and she pins him again.

Bucky’s still laughing, clearly letting Natasha get the upper hand. But something has changed in Natasha’s demeanor; her body taut as she aims a real punch toward Bucky’s face. He blocks it, his hand easily dwarfing her entire fist as he holds it away from his face. She snarls again and-

“Enough!” Clint shouts, lurching to his feet. "Хватит!” he adds in Russian.  

Both Bucky and Natasha freeze; Bucky’s expression is one of confusion, whereas Natasha still has her teeth bared and almost looks disappointed.

“What are we doing?” Clint says, trying to make it a joke, trying to brush off the way his insides have suddenly twisted into nauseous knots at the predatory look in Natasha’s eyes. “This is like… we are basically doing homework right now. What is wrong with us? Grandpa Steve is out of town! We should be… We should be throwing a damn party!”

Bucky sits back and Natasha slowly picks herself up off of the floor, glancing between them with evident confusion. “A party?” Bucky asks skeptically.

Clint flushes a little, feeling awkward for two entirely different reasons as he stares at each of their sweaty faces. “Okay, so no party,” he admits, “since all of our friends are growups, and… in South America. But! We can definitely eat our body weight in junk food and stay up all night watching cartoons and dumb movies.” 

Bucky and Natasha stare at him with unsettlingly identical expressions of bland confusion. Then they look at each other in unison, and shrug. "Ладно,” they say together. 

*****

Bucky stares. “You… were not kidding,” he says.

In the span of forty minutes and a quick shower Clint has somehow produced a literal cornucopia of food. There are three pizzas, several cartons of Chinese takeout, a platter of tater tots, a baking sheet of mozzarella sticks, six flavors of potato chips, a tub of popcorn, two cakes, an apple pie, at least seventeen bowls of candy - several of which Bucky can’t identify - and a small plate of celery next to a jar of peanut butter.

Clint, who has a smear of icing at the corner of his lips and potato chip crumbs on his shirt already, grins at Bucky looking ridiculously pleased with himself. 

“You do realize that this is enough food to make Steve, Thor, and _The Hulk_ sick, right?” Bucky points out. 

Clint shrugs. “Leftovers,” he says, unrepentantly. “Come on, dig in.”

Bucky glances at Natasha, who is eyeing the overladen table with easily twice as much skepticism as Bucky feels. He can only imagine what the feast looks like to her - at this age, she’d probably not seen much food besides the bland Red Room rations.

"С чего хочешь начать?" Bucky asks, nudging her gently.

She blinks up at Bucky and then goes back to scowling at the table of food. "Это тест?" she asks.

"Ты что, нет!" Clint cuts in, a little too fast. He grabs for the bowl of Skittles and holds them out to her. "Вот, попробуй.”

She squints at the bowl, then squints at Clint, then delicately selects a single yellow Skittle. Bucky catches himself holding his breath as he watches her pop the candy into her mouth and chew slowly. After what seems like eternity a slow smile spreads across her face and Clint throws his hands up into the air like his favorite sports team just scored a winning goal.

“Now!” Clint says cheerfully, clapping his hands together. “Time to melt your impressionable little brain with some really shitty TV.”

Clint is, after all, a man of his word. Somehow he and Bucky move the feast onto the coffee table and the three of them slowly eat their way through it while JARVIS plays a selection of truly mind numbing cartoons followed by a series of movies that Clint calls ‘comedy’ but Bucky would argue with that definition if he wasn’t too full of junk food to move.

Natasha watches the TV raptly - the cartoons are all in English, but JARVIS helpfully provides Russian subtitles for her - as she shoves food into her mouth. She samples some of everything on the table, first picking delicately at the new foods and then diving whole heartedly into the egg rolls, mozzarella sticks, popcorn, and rolos.

By the second movie they’ve engaged in a threeway popcorn catching war, which Natasha soundly beats both Clint and Bucky at by catching eighteen pieces in a row. She then spits half chewed kernels everywhere when Clint fails so badly at catching a piece that he falls backwards over the arm of the couch.

Clint’s barely recovered himself enough to start climbing back up the side of the couch when abruptly Natasha stops laughing. Her face goes pale and her teeth snap together and Bucky has about three seconds to lunge for the nearest waste basket before she starts puking. He makes it, just barely in time, and holds the bin under her face as she vomits enthusiastically into it. Bucky rubs her back sympathetically, and Clint winces guiltily from the end of the couch. It doesn’t last long, however, and almost as soon as Natasha’s washed out her mouth she reaches for another slice of pizza.

Even Clint stares in mild horror, but a few minutes later Natasha seems to have entirely forgotten her upset stomach. Bucky sets aside the waste basket carefully, making sure that it’s downwind, and he keeps a wary eye on Natasha but she seems perfectly fine now. Clint makes a _what the fuck_ gesture behind Natasha’s back and Bucky just shrugs. Natasha settles in to refilling her stomach, and Bucky makes Clint switch them back over to the cartoons, which are dumb but at least are actually funny.

The combination of way too much food and endless mind numbing cartoons turn out to be a heady sedative and Bucky half dozes off for a while. He loses track of time, but when he comes back to full awareness cartoons are still playing - now at a nearly inaudible volume - and the coffee table covered in food looks like it’s been ravaged by wolverines. The room has fallen into a twilight partially illuminated by the TV and the light coming in from the communal kitchen behind them. Heaps of pillows and blankets had appeared at some point, and there are half eaten slices of pizza, popcorn kernels, and pieces of candy scattered positively _everywhere_.

Natasha, however, has curled her entire body up in one of the plush armchairs next to the couch. Her face is smashed into the soft leather, her mouth open and drooling slightly. There’s a blanket tucked around her slim body and she has a half eaten cookie still grasped in one hand. It’s ridiculously adorable, and also vaguely horrifying.

Bucky pushes himself up out of the cushions with a bleary snort - it’s bizarre to realize that not only did he manage to fall asleep in a communal area, but that he didn’t snap instantly awake in a half panic when he became aware of his surroundings. He squints around, and finds Clint one his way to the kitchen with the mostly empty pizza boxes. Bucky rubs a hand over his face, pushing his hair back out of his eyes. He has to steady himself on the back of the couch as he stands, but once he’s stable he gathers up the platter formerly holding tater tots and the half squashed Chinese take out cartons.

“We are the worst babysitters ever,” Bucky says, keeping his voice low as he trails Clint into the kitchen.  

Clint glances over at Natasha and shrugs. “She’s alive, fed, and asleep before midnight. I think we did okay,” he says, but it’s clearly a joke. Bucky huffs a laugh and rolls his eyes.

Together, Bucky and Clint clean up the remnants of the food. They tiptoe around Natasha’s chair in an effort not to wake her up - which is surprisingly effective because she doesn’t even stir. A quiet but strangely comfortable sort of camaraderie falls over them as they clean up, moving together in easy synchronicity.

“Today was fun,” Bucky says, the words slipping out before he even realizes that he’s thinking them.

Clint stops, halfway through dumping the dirty dishes in the sink and he blinks at Bucky. “You mean when we got blown-”

“I mean, us, hanging out,” Bucky interrupts, cutting off Clint’s snarky comment. He feels… flustered, which is confusing and unsettling on several levels. But he means it; first sparring together, and then junk food and cartoons, it might well have been the most fun he’s had in… well, in decades.

“Oh, yeah, me too,” Clint says. He gives Bucky one of those crooked little grins that really shouldn’t be charming but definitely are, not that Bucky is about to admit it.

Instead, Bucky focuses on wrapping up the last couple of slices of pizza and finding some tupperware for the remaining tater tots.

“You know, I don’t think we’ve ever really hung out together,” Clint blurts.  “I mean,” he amends quickly, “Like, just us, without the team around.” 

Bucky freezes with his hand on the fridge door handle, his head jerking up as a blinks at Clint. “Sure we-” he starts, but then… the more he thinks about it, it occurs to him that Clint might be right. It’s not that they haven’t spent time together - the team as a whole has become a tight knit group and even outside of the training and fighting that takes up a significant portion of their time, group meals and movie nights are not an irregular thing these days. He and Clint have certainly spent plenty of time together; their complementary skill sets mean they’re often paired together during team training, and as soon as Bucky had settled back into his own brain enough to tolerate… people, Clint had gleefully taken it upon himself to run the _catch the supersoldiers up on popular culture_ campaign. But they’d always been in groups, if not the whole team together then at least Natasha or Steve hanging around with them. 

“I guess we haven’t,” he admits eventually. He comes back to himself enough to close the fridge. Suddenly, now that a spotlight is metaphorically shining on it, the fact that he and Clint are alone together feels strangely monumental; suddenly, he feels unaccountably shy. Bucky abandons the rest of the leftovers in favor of heading for the small bar set into the wall that straddles the line between the kitchen and the living room. “It wasn’t on purpose,” Bucky says, “I mean, I don’t mind hanging out with you.” Bucky’s suddenly glad that his back is to Clint so that Clint can’t see the way Bucky’s whole face scrunches up in an internal _what the fuck_.

“Well sure,” Clint says, all light and self-deprecating humor, “I am a hoot.”

Bucky reaches blindly for the nearest bottle of alcohol, desperate not to acknowledge the weird fluttery feelings in the pit of his stomach. Except when he grabs the bottle the glass shelf it’s sitting on turns red and the bottle refuses to budge. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Bucky snaps, tugging fruitlessly at the unyielding bottle.

“My apologies, Sergeant Barnes, but the current legal drinking age is twenty-one,” JARVIS says.

“I am over one hundred years old!” Bucky protests, trying to ignore the way his voice is edging toward a whine.

“Being a minor sucks ass, doesn’t it,” Clint says, somehow achieving a perfect balance between gloating and commiserating.

“Yeah, I’m figuring that out,” Bucky mutters. He gives up on the bottle and casts around for something else to occupy himself with that isn’t looking at Clint. It’s stupid, it’s not like he’s _actually_ said or done anything to feel awkward about. Bucky’s gotten pretty used to his brain overreacting to things for no reason in the past couple of years, but usually it’s a matter of feeling twitchy and wanting to reach for a weapon, not this strange fluttery shy feeling.

“Hey,” Clint says, his voice low and Bucky just about jumps out of his skin when Clint is suddenly _right there_ close enough to bump against his shoulder.

He just barely catches himself and doesn’t resist when Clint nudges him so that they’re standing at a close angle - it takes Bucky a second, but then he realizes that they’re angled so that their backs are facing JARVIS’ cameras. 

 _Let’s go out_ , Clint signs, his hands keeping the movements subtle and hidden between their two bodies. 

Bucky blinks, caught off guard. “Out?” he repeats in confusion, and Clint hisses at him, giving him a pointed look.

 _You know, get a drink. Go dancing, maybe_ , Clint signs, wiggling his eyebrows significantly.

Bucky hesitates. Dancing… he hasn’t been dancing since 1942… probably. Two days ago he wouldn’t have even considered it, the idea of loud music and so many strangers pressed around him enough to make him want to crawl out of his skin. But suddenly, looking at Clint’s impish grin, Bucky wants nothing more than to go out for a night on the town. Except, _I don’t think JARVIS will let us go out,_ he signs back, but he can’t help a slow grin spreading across his face as he catches on to Clint’s game. 

Clint shrugs, all false innocence. _That’s why it’s called sneaking out_ , he replies. _If they’re going to treat up like teenagers, we might as well act like it_.

 _Let’s-_ Bucky starts, but then stops, glancing over his shoulder toward where Natasha is snoring softly.

Clint nudges him to refocus his attention. _She’s asleep_ , he points out, _and JARVIS can watch her. This is the safest building in New York._

Bucky hesitates for half a second longer, then shrugs; Clint does have a point. Clint grins and fist pumps the air triumphantly. Before Bucky can ask how they’re going to do it, Clint winks at him and steps back.

“Hey, JARVIS, Bucky and I are going to get some ice cream, we’ll be right back,” Clint announces.

“There are four gallon size containers of ice cream in the freezer to your left,” JARVIS replies primly.

“Yeah, but there’s no, uh… peanut brittle fudgy swirl up here,” Clint says; and Bucky really hopes Tony hasn’t added any new upgrades to JARVIS tone analysis protocols lately, because Clint is not doing a very good job of hiding his gleeful excitement. “We’re going to check the cafeteria freezer.”  

Clint doesn’t wait for JARVIS to respond, nudging Bucky forward and soon they’re both pelting down the stairs to the public floors in the bottom third of the Tower. It’s ridiculous and sort of thrilling to race after Clint into the cafeteria kitchens. They skid to a halt in front of the freezer and Bucky raises an eyebrow at Clint. “What now?” he asks, slightly breathless and keeping his voice low even though this late the kitchens are closed and there’s no one around.

In lieu of answering, Clint just tilts his head and they’re off again. Through the backdoor of the kitchen and past the service elevator toward the loading bay at the back of the building. “Quick, before he catches on,” Clint hisses, ushering Bucky through the door and they’re bursting out into the cool night air.

The door locks as it clicks closed behind them but Clint and Bucky are still running, headlong and laughing breathlessly as they rush through the alley and onto the main street. By the time they stop they’re both winded and laughing and somehow they end up hanging off of each other for support as they struggle to get their breath back.

Bucky is struck, abruptly, with the thought that he’s never seen Clint look so happy. His pale cheeks are flushed and his hair is sticking up at odd angles, his grin so wide that it might break his face in half. … Although, to be fair, Bucky’s face sort of feels like it might break from the force of his own smile too.

Their fit of giddy giggling is interrupted by the shrill ring of Bucky’s phone. It startles both of them, and on instinct Bucky fumbles to grab it so hastily that he almost drops the phone on the ground when he goes to push the answer button.

“Sergeant Barnes, I must insist that you and Agent Barton return inside of the Tower immediately,” JARVIS says primly through the phone speaker. Bucky freezes, some part of him instinctively locking up at the mild reprimand in JARVIS’ tone. 

But before Bucky can gather himself enough to come up with an answer, Clint snatches the phone out of his hand. “JARVIS, the cafeteria didn’t have the right ice cream flavor either. It’s fine, we’re big boys. Just keep an eye on Nat and we’ll be back before curfew.” Then Clint hangs up before JARVIS can answer.

Clint grins and holds the phone back out toward Bucky. Bucky blinks blankly at it for a long moment, waiting for it to ring again. But it doesn’t, and eventually Bucky reaches out to take the phone back, still feeling vaguely as though it might bite him. “Do we have a curfew?” he asks.

Clint tilts his head, considering, then shrugs. “Well, if we do, we are _definitely_ going to break it,” he declares gleefully. 

Bucky huffs and shakes his head, feeling the slightly hysterical giggling start to bubble up in his chest again. “This is the stupidest, most ridiculous-” he shakes his head helplessly, and he can’t quite figure out how to finish the sentence but Clint finishes for him.

“It’s awesome!” Clint declares. “Fuck, I haven’t done anything like this since…” he pauses, blinking, “well, ever, really.”

“Really?” Bucky asks, distracted from the complicated mix of guilt and excitement in his chest. They’ve started walking now, the overwhelming euphoria of their escape settling into a background buzz of good humor. It’s making everything feel a little bit hazy around the edges, but in a good way, like walking through bubbles or something equally ridiculous.

Clint shrugs. “I mean, the first time I was a teenager I didn’t… exactly… _have_ a house to sneak out of. Or parentals to sneak away from. Or a curfew to break. Just Barney, and he was usually the one convincing me to go sneak _into_ a bar.”

“Oh, right.” That sobers Bucky a little, but Clint nudges his shoulder with an easy grin that tells Bucky not to worry about it.

“What about you?” Clint asks. “I bet you and Steve used to really light up the town… or whatever the old timey phrase for that is.”

Bucky huffs and ducks his head. “Yeah, I guess. We didn’t really sneak out to do it though. I mean, things were different back then.”

“But you’d go drinking and dancing and stuff, right?” Clint’s steps are light as he practically skips down the street, exuberant and careless so that half the time he’s bumping into Bucky’s shoulder and the other half he’s just barely managing not to run face first into trash cans and street lamps. “I mean, I have definitely heard the stories; you’d drag Steve out on a double date and then carry his drunk ass home after he picked a fight in an alley.”

“First of all, Steve exaggerates. That didn’t happen _every_ time,” Bucky says, reaching out instinctively to save Clint from tripping over a pile of trash. “And don’t go getting any ideas; I have no intention of saving your ass or carrying it home.” 

“Hey, my ass can protect itself!” Clint protests, a little too indignantly.

“Yeah, Steve used to say the same thing,” Bucky teases, eliciting a playful shove from Clint which he returns without thought. Maybe it’s because they were already talking about Steve, or maybe it’s Clint’s carefree attitude, but it’s almost unsettlingly familiar to walk down the street laughing and practically tripping over one another. 

“So, you still want that drink?” Clint prompts, when they’ve put the Tower several blocks behind them.

“Yeah, but, uh… how are we going to get one?” Bucky asks. “I mean, my ID could maybe pass-” 

“The one that says you’re a hundred years old?” Clint interrupts skeptically, “I don’t think so.” 

Bucky huffs and rolls his eyes. “The _functional_ one that says I’m twenty-six,” he corrects. “But no one is going to believe your real age right now.” 

“Please, Barnes, come on, this is New York.” Clint rolls his eyes, “I could probably find at least four bars within five blocks of here that won’t card us at all. All we need is a little cash.” Clint pauses, looking around, and finds an ATM up at the next corner. “Here’s hoping JARVIS didn’t freeze our accounts.”

Luckily, JARVIS didn’t. Bucky trails Clint over to the ATM and watches as he withdrawals a fistfull of cash. Clint waves it at him triumphantly before stuffing it in his pocket, “see? Now we’re good to go.”

Clint, however, had slightly over estimated the population of clubs and bars in the immediate vicinity of the Tower, but a short subway ride later and they find a basement club tucked in between a tattoo parlor and a sandwich shop. The bouncer looks unimpressed, but accepts Clint’s wad of cash in lieu of IDs and waves them in without question.

Walking into the club is a little bit like diving into a lake of sound; but it isn’t as overwhelming as Bucky had expected it to be. The club is nothing like the dance halls of Bucky’s first youth, though he’d known better than to expect that. It isn’t exactly like the clubs on those teen shows that Natasha likes to watch either, though. It’s loud and disorienting, certainly, with flashing lights and pulsing music and people crowded so close together that the concept of personal space has to be thrown entirely out of the window. But he can breathe, and he can move, and he doesn’t feel like he’s at risk of contracting diseases just from the air in the room.

Bucky can’t help but to notice that Clint falters a couple of steps inside of the door too. Clint’s face scrunches up, and he shakes his head slightly, blinking his eyes as they adjust to the irregular lighting. Impulsively, Bucky reaches out and lightly clasps Clint’s shoulder. _Are you okay?_ He signs as soon as he has Clint’s attention, not bothering to try and yell it over the pounding music.

Clint shakes his head again, but it’s a short jerk as though he’s trying to clear it rather than a response to Bucky’s question. “Just been a while since I could actually hear in one of these places,” Clint answers aloud, raising his voice but also leaning in so that he doesn’t have to yell too loudly. Nevertheless, Bucky has to watch his lips to put the words together and he catches himself missing his enhanced hearing - though it would definitely be a double edged sword in the loud, crowded club.

By wordless agreement they make their way around the edge of the room to the bar. It’s actually still a bit early for the club scene, and the room isn’t as crowded as it could be, for which Bucky is grateful; that also makes it a bit easier for them to get the bartender’s attention. Clint orders them both rum and cokes before Bucky gets the chance to speak up. There’s a slightly terrifying six seconds while the bartender eyes them skeptically, but he takes the cash Clint slides to him and goes to make their drinks without a word. 

“Are you sure liquor's a good idea?” Bucky can’t help asking, though even as the words are coming out of his mouth a voice in the back of his brain is calling him a worrywart. 

Clint shrugs. “Place like this, it’ll be a lot more coke than rum anyway. Besides, we’re having a little fun but we won’t go crazy.” He passes Bucky his drink, and just like everything else he proves right about its strength - or lack thereof.

They manage to find an empty table in a back corner of the room, about as far away from the bustling dance floor as it’s possible to get without leaving the building. Bucky is able to settle in with his back to the wall and survey the room. It’s definitely not a dance hall, with the pulsing thud of the music and the prominently displayed skin and the waving colored lights. But… on the other hand, it does feel strangely similar too. The music and the clothing may be different, but the atmosphere is really the same - the room teeming with the exuberance of youth, laughter and alcohol and hormones all thickening the air as people dance and talk and drink.

Bucky has no idea how long he’s been sipping his drink and watching the room when Clint catches his attention with a light elbow to the ribs. “Not like the old days, huh?” he says, as though he’s read Bucky’s mind. 

“In some ways, yes; in some no,” he replies with a shrug, but suddenly he doesn’t want to dwell on the past. “What about you? You seem pretty at home.” 

Clint’s lips twitch in a way that isn’t entirely happy, but he doesn’t seem offended either. “Barney and I… well, he said limiting my skills to the circus was a waste. And there were worst things to do than hustle pool, I guess.”

“Stevie and I did that a couple of times,” Bucky says, unable to resist a small smile. “Not seriously, you know, but Steve was good with angles even before the serum. Of course, one too many jokes about him barely being tall enough to reach the table and we’d be more likely to end up with a brawl than a game.”

“You know, every time I hear back-in-the-day stories from you and Steve, I’m never sure whether I should laugh or feel depressed,” Clint muses.

It’s Bucky’s turn to give a smile that isn’t entirely happy. “Same,” he says wryly. 

Clint huffs and shakes his head as he drains the last of his drink. “Round two,” he declares, giving Bucky a mock salute with his empty glass before heading back to the bar.

Bucky watches Clint go, his eyes tracking Clint’s every movement as though magnetically drawn to him. It’s habit, he tells himself, watching his teammate’s back in a volatile, exposed environment; except that he doesn’t feel any of the hypervigilance that usually accompanies that sort of urge. In fact, he’s feeling surprisingly relaxed, all things considered. The noise and the press of dancers in the center of the room are more of a pleasant backdrop than a cause for paranoia, and… Bucky really likes Clint’s company. He’d known that already; he’s always enjoyed Clint, with just the right mix of pragmatism and humor that makes him both relaxing and fun to be around. But Clint was right earlier, they’ve only ever really spent time together as part of the group, it’s different and strangely thrilling to have Clint’s attention all to himself. 

“Drink up!” Clint declares, returning with the promised second round of drinks and thunking them down onto the table. Obligingly, Bucky finishes draining his first glass and reaches for the second, though he just cradles it in his hands for now.

“So, d’you think they’ve finished ransacking Peru yet?” Clint asks after a couple of minutes. He’s slumped in his seat, elbows spread wide on the table in a way that would have made Bucky’s mother have an aneurism, and he’s got two of those miniature straws in his mouth through which he is slowly but steadily slurping his drink.  

Bucky opens his mouth to answer, but then finds that he has to close it again and swallow without actually saying anything. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he says, more to his own surprise than Clint’s, he’d bet.

“Okay,” Clint says easily with a crooked shrug. “You could tell me more hilarious-depressing stories from your misspent… first youth?”

Bucky shakes his head, lifting his drink to take a sip. The alcohol has made him feel warm and relaxed, but there’s something jittery in the pit of his stomach. His eyes scan the room, but he’s already catalogued the entrances and exits, and he’s not looking for threats or targets. “I don’t want to talk about that either,” he says. He feels vaguely like he should apologize for shutting down Clint’s attempts at conversation and mentally casts around for something they _could_ talk about, except he can’t seem to find anything. “I don’t want to talk,” he admits the thought aloud as soon as it occurs to him.

Impulsively, Bucky stands and drains the rest of his drink in one gulp. “Let’s go dance,” he says. He feels a moment of heady recklessness that borders on terror, and he’s just about to take it back when Clint’s whole face breaks into a grin. 

“Hell yeah!” he says around his straws, pumping a fist into the air as he takes one more eager slurp.

They don’t go too far into the throng on the dance floor, but even skirting the edge they’re quickly absorbed into a tight press. For a moment it’s dizzying, overwhelming, and Bucky abruptly remembers with absolute horror that he has no idea how to do any modern dances. But then Clint is there in front of him, pressed in close enough to grin at Bucky from only a couple of inches away which is somehow more reassuring than it is discomforting. The music is loud, with a thumping beat that’s impossible to avoid, and, once the initial panic passes, it’s surprisingly easy to let his hips move in a motion that imitates the way everyone around them is moving.

Clint is obviously experienced and has no trouble throwing himself into the pulse and sway of the dance floor. He’s generally a pretty cheerful guy, but the way he moves to the beat, the way the flashing lights alternately cast his face in brightness and shadow, the grin still broad on his face, it’s so much more. It’s as though Clint is lighter than he usually is. There’s less effort to his happiness, and Bucky finds himself falling into Clint’s gravitational pull more than the music.

He loses track of time. Loses track of space, even. He loses track of everything except the pulse of the music and the heat of Clint’s body moving just close enough to touch. It’s only belatedly - he has no idea how belatedly - that he realizes his hands are gripping Clint’s waist, pulling him closer still until they’re practically grinding against each other. Clint laughs, turning around so that his back it pressed fully against Bucky’s chest, his hips moving in tantalizing circles and Bucky’s hands wrap fully around Clint’s body, teasing at the edge of Clint’s shirt. Bucky feels hot and flushed all over, the only thing keeping him tethered to the world is the weight of Clint’s body against him. It’s thrilling and exhilarating in a way that feels familiar but distant… a way he can’t quite place…

Clint turns back around so that they’re face to face again and he drapes his arms around Bucky’s neck, loose and easy, his hips still moving against Bucky’s. Clint’s ears and cheeks are pink, smiling so hard that his eyes are crinkled up at the corners, and he’s… he’s so close. Bucky catches himself staring first at Clint’s eyes, then the tip of Clint’s tongue pokes out as he licks his lips and Bucky’s gaze is uncontrollably drawn to them.

“Bucky?”

Bucky has to blink hard to get himself to focus, not so much hearing Clint call his name as feeling the word vibrating where their chests meet. He shakes his head slightly in an attempt to clear it, suddenly realizing how dizzy and lightheaded he feels; but he’s smiling, broad and uncontrollable and he can’t bring himself to let go of Clint.

Clint gets a bemused sort of look on his face, a crooked little grin and a tilted head as he studies Bucky’s face. “Let’s get some air,” Clint says. It’s almost painful when Clint pulls away, but he doesn’t let them lose contact completely, grabbing Bucky’s hand as they weave their way through the crowd. Bucky doesn’t question it, just follows where Clint leads until they’ve come out on the other side of the crowd and Clint is pulling him down a side hallway toward the bathrooms.

It’s quiet and dark in the hallway, the music muffled by the dividing walls and most of the light coming from the neon beer logo signs lining the walls. Clint stops midway down the hall, leaning back against the wall and letting his head thunk against it with a breathless little laugh. 

“That was fun,” he says, his face aglow and slightly sweaty as he grins at Bucky. “Fuck, it’s been so long since I went dancing. I forgot how fun it can be.”

“Yeah, me too,” Bucky answers. He finds himself standing awkwardly in the middle of the hallway, watching Clint. “I’ve never been dancing like that before, though. I… I liked it.” Bucky feels flushed himself, and a little breathless. He hadn’t realized he was exerting that much energy on the dance floor, and maybe there’d been more alcohol in those drink than he’d realized because this heady, dizzy rush can only be tipsiness.

“Tell you what, next time you can teach me the Charleston,” Clint teases. 

Bucky huffs and shakes his head. “Nah, the Charleston’s boring. I’ll teach you to Lindy Hop,” he says.

“Sounds like a deal.” Distantly Bucky realizes that he and Clint are still holding hands. He notices this when Clint uses the advantage to reel him in closer; Bucky goes, though he stops just shy of actually letting their chests touch. 

Suddenly, he feels even more breathless than he had on the dance floor, staring into Clint’s eyes from such an intimate distance, holding Clint’s hand. He’s keenly aware that while they’re currently alone in the dimly lit hallway, someone else could come across them at any moment. He can’t help just the tiniest twinge of panic at the thought - the very old part of his brain that can’t seem to shake the days when standing this close to a man in public could have gotten them arrested, or worse. But that, along with the rest of the world, seems so distant and unimportant right now. Nothing seems more important than the strong, calloused grip of Clint’s fingers threaded through his own and the soft pink of Clint’s lips and- 

Bucky’s phone rings and the shrill sound of it makes them both jump about a mile.

“Fuck!” Clint swears, clutching his chest

“Shit,” Bucky agrees, fumbling in his pocket for his phone and nearly dropping it several times before he gets it to his ear.

“Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS says as soon as the line connects.

“Uh, hey JARVIS,” Bucky says, giving Clint a wide eyed look. 

Clint reaches out and grabs the phone, flicking the button to put it on speaker. “We’re behaving, dad, I swear,” he says, winking at Bucky.

“Relieved though I am to hear that, I must report that Ms. Romanov has gone missing,” JARVIS says, his tone distinctly short on patience.

“What?” Bucky grabs the phone back from Clint, panic suddenly rushing through him. “What do you mean she’s missing?”

“It appears that she found and exploited a gap in my security protocols,” JARVIS says dryly. “And did so in a much more subtle manner than the two of you.” 

“Fuck. We have to find her,” Clint’s eyes are wide as he stares at Bucky, his face echoing the panic Bucky is feeling. “She’s so tiny. New York is so big.”

“She’s a tiny _highly trained assassin_ ,” Bucky points out. “Where do we even-”

“Ice cream.” They both actually do jump out of their skins at the high pitched voice coming from just behind Bucky. “You promised.”

Bucky whirls around and both he and Clint spend at least a full minute blinking agape at Natasha. She’s got a sweatshirt on over her jeans and t-shirt; Bucky is fairly certain that it’s Steve’s sweatshirt, which means she’s able to slouch almost her entire body down into it. The hood is up, covering her hair and her hands are sunk deep into the front pouch of the sweatshirt. But she’s bright eyed and staring at them expectantly.

“Ice cream,” she prompts again, the words heavily accented but perfectly clear and deadly serious.

Bucky glances at Clint, who looks back at Bucky and shrugs. “We did say we’d get ice cream,” Clint says, a little helpless and a lot amused; his lips are twitching so hard that it looks painful but he has valiantly managed not to start laughing yet.

“JARVIS, she’s here with us, she’s safe,” Bucky reports into the phone as soon as he remembers he’s holding it. “We’ve, uh, been reminded that we promised her ice cream. Apparently.”

“I swear to god she was asleep,” Clint mutters to himself, then takes the phone back. “Look, Jay, I’m sorry about this. But she’s fine, we’re fine, everyone’s fine. We’re gonna go get some late night ice cream and then we’ll be right back to the Tower, I promise.” Clint doesn’t give JARVIS a chance to answer before hanging up the phone and handing it back to Bucky. Bucky has a sinking suspicion that both he and Clint are going to be receiving some very cold showers for at least the next month - pissing off the sentient AI that runs _literally everything_ in your house is never a good idea.

But Natasha, having gathered that she’s going to get what she wants, is grinning, and Clint is giggling helplessly around the fist he’s shoved into his mouth, and Bucky honestly can’t remember the last time he’s felt this good. “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream, I guess,” he declares, throwing his hands up in the air with a little giggle of his own.

*****

The three of them slip out of the back door of the club - Bucky isn’t going to bother questioning how Natasha managed to get in - and head down the street. It’s late enough that once they get a couple blocks away from the club the street is quiet and almost empty; it’s irrational, Bucky knows, but he insists that Natasha walks sandwiched in between himself and Clint as they head down the dark street.

Once again displaying his almost uncanny knowledge of the City after dark, Clint leads them unerringly toward an all night ice cream parlor. Bucky raises an eyebrow at him but Clint just shrugs. “Never know when you’re going to need a scoop,” he says, like that’s perfectly normal, especially coming from a man who lives in a building with sixteen kitchens, four restaurants, and two cafeterias. But Bucky decides it isn’t worth it to call him out on it.

Both Clint and Natasha immediately start going down the sunday bar filling massive bowls with at least three different flavors of ice cream and two scoops of almost every candy available. Bucky feels a little nauseous watching them, and settles for a much more modest bowl of praline pecan ice cream with some caramel drizzle. As soon as they’ve paid for the ice cream the sleepy and incredibly bored looking young man behind the counter goes back to playing on his phone, presumably intent on forgetting their presence entirely.

The three of them settle at a little café table just inside the front window of the ice cream shop. Natasha is still bundled up in her stolen hoodie and she swings her legs slightly in the air beneath her chair as she shoves spoonfuls of ice cream into her mouth. Clint eats his ice cream with equal gusto, holding eye contact with Natasha as though silently challenging her to a race.

Bucky just watches them; the euphoric rush that had come over him in the club is gone and in its place has settled a sort of tiredness that’s almost cozy. Comfortable, even. There’s a warm line on Bucky’s thigh where Clint’s knee is knocking into his leg and the fluttering sensation in the pit of Bucky’s stomach doesn’t seem so foreign any more. He has no idea what to do with it; he isn’t even sure he wants to think it all the way through to its conclusion. Not right now, anyway. Not when everything feels so easy and fun; he can’t bear the thought of ruining things, just in case he’s misreading Clint’s intentions. So Bucky doesn’t question it, doesn’t let himself think about it too hard. He just lets himself feel the warm pleasure of it.

When the ice cream is gone, as promised, they dutifully head for the subway back to the Tower. There are only a couple of other people on the platform, and when the train arrives they end up in a car with just one exhausted looking business man and a couple that look like they’re coming from a punk rock concert and are too absorbed in each other to even notice what state they’re in. Natasha immediately heads to the opposite end of the car from the other people and plops herself down into a seat. She slouches down, her hood back up and the sweatshirt looking more like a blanket than a piece of clothing. She looks sleepy but contented and thankfully not like she’s going to throw up again. 

Clint decides against sitting, instead grabbing onto the pole in the center of the aisle and leaning against it casually. Bucky hesitates, glancing between them, but Natasha is staring studiously out of the window - possibly as a subtle means to stare at the couple making out on the other side of the car - and doesn’t seem interested in socializing. And… and Bucky _wants_ to stay close to Clint. It’s like the man has some kind of magnetic pull that’s drawing Bucky in - has always drawn him in somewhat, now that Bucky thinks about it - but it feels almost impossible to resist tonight, after everything. After the almost intimacy of sparring earlier, all the teasing and joking and bad cartoons, the daring escape from JARVIS’ watchful presence and the drinks and the dancing and… 

“What?” Clint asks, raising a quizzical eyebrow at Bucky. “Do I have ice cream on my face or something?” He lets go of the pole to start swiping at his lips and cheeks self consciously. 

Bucky shakes his head. “Sorry,” he says, maybe a little too quickly. “I was just zoning out.” 

“Oh, sure.” Clint settles back against the pole. He slouches slightly, somehow looking effortlessly charming and also like he might fall over if the train comes to too abrupt of a halt. “So, you’re just checking out the scenery then?” Clint says. He’s tilting his head slightly, a crooked little smirk on his face, and he makes what is probably supposed to be a wink but at just the wrong moment the train lurches and he loses his grip on the pole. 

Bucky doesn’t have the chance to feel mortified because he’s too busy stepping forward to catch Clint before he can smash his stupid face into the pole or the ground. Clint ends up clutching at Bucky’s arms for balance, bent over so far that he’s almost face planted into Bucky’s stomach - which, granted, is at least mildly softer than the metal of the train. Natasha hasn’t looked away from the window, but she’s definitely laughing at them.

“Critical miss,” Clint mumbles, or at least that’s what Bucky thinks he said. Clint’s ears are pink when he straightens up, “sorry about that,” he says at normal volume.

“How are you so good on missions but such a disaster the rest of the time?” Bucky asks before he can catch his stupid mouth and tell it to _stop_.

But luckily Clint just laughs, easy and genuine with just a touch of self depreciation. “Talent and practice,” he answers.

Bucky’s laughter bursts out of him so loud that he startles himself and his nose wrinkles up without his permission. “That’s one way of putting it,” he says. But Clint is still holding onto his arms instead of the pole, and the fluttering in the pit of Bucky’s stomach is stronger than ever and Clint’s mouth is _right there_ - 

The train pulls to a stop with a screech of metal on metal and a lurch that makes both Clint and Bucky stumble half a step. Natasha brushes past them in a way that can only be on purpose as she heads for the doors and Bucky could swear that he hears her mutter, “dorks,” under her breath as she passes.

“Hey, language,” Clint protests, nudging her shoulder playfully as he and Bucky follow her onto the platform.

“Бакланы,” she responds promptly, utterly unrepentant.

“Why you cheeky little-”

Natasha laughs and takes off running up the stairs with Clint chasing after her and Bucky only a step behind them both. The chase last all the way down the half a block to the side entrance that leads into the garage access of the Tower. The three of them pile in through the door breathless and laughing, nearly tripping over each other on their way through the threshold. But only a few steps in they all screech to a halt - Natasha, still in the lead, nearly getting trampled by the boys when they almost don’t pull up short enough.

The entirety of the Avengers team are standing in front of the door to the stairwell in formation. Steve is in front with his arms crossed and his cowl still on, flanked by Sam and Tony, with Thor looming and Bruce slouching in the back. 

“Um, hey?” Clint tries, his eyes a little too round and his voice distinctly sheepish. 

“Do you have any idea how late it is?” Steve responds, the furrow between his eyebrows nearly the size of the Grand Canyon.  

Subtly, Natasha fades back so that she’s standing just a little bit behind Clint and Bucky and Bucky catches himself instinctively stepping up to fully shield her. Clint does the same, and the warm brush of his shoulder against Bucky’s is distinctly distracting, even under the full weight of Steve’s Scowl-Of-Disapproval.

“How was Peru?” Bucky asks innocently.

*****

There’s a sound at Clint’s door. He’s rolled up onto his knees, notched an arrow, and fired before he’s full registered that the sound was someone knocking followed by the door knob turning.

“Fucking hell,” Bucky swears, jerking back as the suction cup arrow sticks to the doorjam a couple of inches from his face. 

“Shit, sorry,” Clint mutters, dropping back down onto the messy heap of pillows and blankets that cover his bed. He doesn’t feel all that bad, since Bucky technically hadn’t waited for permission to enter, and a suction cup is a pretty low risk weapon anyway, even in the Amazing Hawkeye’s hands. “I, uh, I was worried maybe Steve had caught a third wind.”

And in Clint’s defense, it’s got to be nearly dawn by now. Every member of the team had felt the need to take a turn in lecturing them on the _irresponsibility of their behavior_ , even Tony and Thor, which Clint feels is frankly just unfair. Surprisingly, it was Bruce who had managed to keep the longest wind, and Clint had very quickly started to regret the fact that turning off his hearing aids is no longer an option. When the grown ups had eventually run out of steam, the three of them had been summarily sent to bed and Clint had decidedly made a point of sulking off to his room; he figures if he’s going to be treated like a teenager then he might as well acting like one. But sleep had proven an impossibility. He’s still buzzing from the thrill of their night out. It’s been a long damn time since he had a simple night out like that. He can still feel the pulse of the club music in his veins, and the ghost of Bucky’s touch on his arms…

He’d given up on sleep pretty quickly and dug the miniature bow and quiver of suction cup arrows out from under his bed - technically, most people would classify it as a toy, but Clint isn’t most people. Anyway, it’s a good way to pass the time when he has nothing better to do, laying in bed and lazily firing the arrows at the ceiling. The soothing motion had nearly lulled him off into a meditative like doze when Bucky interrupted him.

“No, I’m sorry, I just wanted-” Bucky starts and falters, hovering awkwardly in the doorway. “I didn’t want to wake you if you were asleep, but I-” 

“I’m not,” Clint interjects, Bucky’s rambling fading out anyway. “Asleep, I mean, obviously,” he adds. “Uh, come on in.” He drops the bow and starts shoving at the heap of mostly dirty clothes piled up at the foot of the bed; suddenly he feels stupidly self conscious. It’s not like Bucky is likely to be surprised that Clint’s a slob, but, it occurs to him - abruptly and jarringly - that Bucky’s never actually been inside of his room before. He’s never actually seen Bucky’s room either, and now that he’s thinking about it that feels inexplicably weird.

“Target practice?” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow at the ceiling over Clint’s bed.

Clint looks up, actually focusing on the arrows currently stuck to his ceiling for the first time, and realizes that they’ve formed the shape of an - albeit slightly crooked - heart. Because he’s apparently a goddamned sap. Fuck. He shrugs, trying to be casual, “couldn’t sleep,” he dismisses.

Bucky smirks a little, but to Clint’s relief doesn’t comment further. After a moment of hesitation, Bucky apparently gives into the fact that there’s nowhere in Clint’s room but the bed to sit and deigns to perch gingerly at the foot of it. “He did, you know,” Bucky says with a crooked smile - a shy, awkward look that Clint doesn’t think he’s ever seen before the past twenty-four hours but now feels strangely familiar.

Clint blinks at him blankly.

“Steve. Got another wind,” Bucky clarifies. He leans back against the footboard, bringing his legs up to sit cross legged facing Clint. “We ended up reminiscing for a bit. I think he’s actually kind of disappointed we went out without him.” 

“Well, maybe we can go out again, if we’re ever un-grounded,” Clint jokes.

“I’d like that,” Bucky says, though there’s something in his voice that makes it sound a little too fast, and just a little breathless. “I mean, we definitely need to get Steve out of the Tower in civvies more often. But, specifically, I had a lot of fun tonight… with you.”

“Me too.” Clint can feel the tips of his ears turning red even as the words trip over each other on their way out of his mouth, but it takes his brain a couple more minutes to figure out why. “Well, I have fun with myself a lot. But it was nice to have company this time. You. I mean, I had a lot of fun with you… too.” He trails off at the end, so that the statement almost sounds like a question, which he definitely didn’t mean for it to be. He feels flushed, like his heart is beating too hard, and he feels strangely sweaty- “I didn’t mean that like a sex thing!” he blurts - and oh god, it’s got worse. Being a teenager is _the worst_. “Not that I’m opposed- I mean… I didn’t mean- But if you wanted, maybe-”

Luckily, Bucky takes pity on Clint and saves them both from his rambling; unluckily, Bucky choses to do it by lurching forward and kissing Clint. Which isn’t unlucky at all, in fact, it’s great, amazing really. Except that he moves a little too fast and Clint isn’t quite prepared and he loses his balance, toppling backward so that his back hits the mattress with an _oof_. Of course, Bucky comes toppling after him and the kiss isn’t quite so much romantic as it is awkward and semi-painful.

But on the other hand, it definitely leaves Clint breathless. 

“Fuck!” Bucky swears, scrambling to roll off of Clint. “I swear I used to be good at this.” He yanks a hand through his hair as he leans on his elbow next to Clint, looking equal parts frustrated and mortified.

Clint is about to die, and he isn’t sure whether Bucky accidentally broke his sternum or he’s just going to asphyxiate from laughing so hard. 

“It’s not _that_ funny!” Bucky protests indignantly, punching Clint lightly on the shoulder, but that only causes Clint to make a half hearted effort to roll away from him and laugh harder. “I’ll have you know-” Bucky starts, but he can’t finish before he too dissolves into laughter. It’s stupid and awkward and yet somehow absolutely perfect.

“That fucking hurt,” Clint wheezes in protest, arms wrapped protectively around his chest - which is far more sore from laughing than from Bucky falling on him, not that he’s about to admit that.

“Oh god, your face though,” Bucky sniggers, burying his face in the nearest pillow even though it does nothing to hide his laughter.

“Warn a guy next time!” Clint’s face hurts - he thinks it might actually freeze this way. This is definitely it, he’s going to die because he cockblocked himself with his own clumsiness.

“Fuck you, Barton!”

“Yes please!”

That only sets them off again. Clint has no idea how long they spend rolling around on his bed laughing themselves sick. For a long time they’re both too breathless to form words, but all they have to do is look at one another and off they go on another round of blushing and sniggering. Somehow, they eventually end up in an exhausted heap, gasping for breath while both trying to lay on the same pillow. Their faces are less than two inches apart, Bucky’s knee is digging into Clint’s hip and Clint’s fairly certain his elbow is endangering Bucky’s spleen. 

Bucky’s eyes are bright, too bright, and his - ridiculous - eyelashes are wet from his tears of laughter, his breath smells faintly of the rum and coke and caramel drizzle from earlier, and he’s biting his lower lip in a futile effort to contain his smile. Clint’s breath catches in his chest like a goddamned romance novel, but here he is, thoroughly fucked and in for a lot more than a pound, apparently. 

Their second kiss goes much better - or at least, more traditionally. It’s still a little awkward; Clint has to half lift himself up to get a good angle and Bucky tries to cup Clint’s face but his hand gets tangled in the blanket they’re laying on. But it’s good, and after a few seconds they get it right. They’re both still breathless and Clint isn’t sure whether to blame that or _kissing Bucky_ for the way his head is spinning. Clint has no concept of the time in between but it seems like between one second and the next his hands are under Bucky’s shirt and Bucky is gripping Clint’s ass to drag him closer.

Teenager or not, it has been a long damn time, and Clint is eager - bordering on desperate - to get his hands on as much of Bucky’s skin as is humanly possible. Bucky’s grip on Clint is equally urgent, and neither one of them is patient enough to deal with removing clothing properly. It’s a clumsy, frenzied mess of groping and rubbing, of lips and teeth and tongue. Clint is painfully hard in his jeans, his whole brain focused on the press of Bucky’s knee between his legs. Somehow Bucky ends up on top of Clint, straddling Clint’s knee as they rock together passionately.

It’s perfect. Amazing. Clint’s mind is literally blown- 

Until Bucky stops. He pulls his head back, his whole body going stiff as he cocks his head. 

“What?” Clint asks, feeling decidedly unashamed of the whine in his voice as he tries to drag Bucky’s lips back into reach.

“Hush,” Bucky retorts, swatting him away. “I thought-” He breaks off, scowling with evident concentration, his head turned toward the door.

Clint stops, listening too, and for what feeling like an impossibly long, torturous minute neither of them moves. Then Clint hears it too, just the slightest scrap of fabric and metal. Bucky gestures for Clint to be quiet and carefully climbs off of the bed, but he doesn’t go for the door. Instead, he reaches up and pries the covering off of the vent next to the door. Bucky has to stand on his tiptoes to do it, but the metal covering comes off easily - Clint has used the vent for storage on a handful of occasions.  

He’s never stored a person in the vent, however, despite the pale face peeking out at them. He’s too big to fit in it himself, not that he’s particularly inclined toward trying, but as it turns out Natasha is much more flexible, and has much narrower shoulders than Clint does. 

“Come on out,” Bucky says, his voice gentle but amused as he holds out a hand to help lift Natasha down.

She hesitates, blinking at them both. But then she slides out, delicately stepping on Bucky’s offered hand and then dropping the rest of the way to the ground lightly. She - like Bucky and Clint - is still wearing her jeans and the stolen hoodie; she’s also clutching a small pillow. 

“What were you doing in there?” Clint asks. He leans up on his elbows to see her better, then belatedly but hastily drags a blanket up to cover his crotch.

Natasha just blinks at him and hugs her pillow. 

"Мы не сердимся," Bucky tells her. He leads her over to the bed, all gentleness and reassurance except for the rueful, flushed glance he shoots Clint over her head. 

Natasha clambers up onto the bed, snagging one of the extra blankets and curling it around herself as though building herself a nest at the foot of the bed. She props herself up against the footboard and settles in like she owns the place.

“I… guess she’s sleeping here,” Bucky says, giving Clint a look and shrugging. 

Clint waves his hand in an incredibly half assed fist pump as he lets himself drop back down flat on the bed. “Sleepover it is,” he declares, giving in to the apparent inevitable.

“Am I invited?” Bucky asks, and Clint has to look at him to tell if he’s serious or not. Bucky’s standing beside the bed, rocking back and forth on his heels but he’s wearing a shit eating grin.

“Get your ass in bed, Barnes,” Clint grumbles. 

Bucky laughs and deliberately knees Clint in the stomach as he clambers over him to flop face down on the bed. Clint shoves him in retaliation and they devolve into a bout of jostling that is both teasing and bordering on inappropriate until they both manage to get settled comfortably among the pillows and blankets. Natasha, from her nest at the foot of the bed, just blinks at them looking distinctly unimpressed.

Clint grunts and chucks a second pillow at her. “Stop staring, it’s creepy.”

She tilts her head and gives him a slow smile. “I like creepy,” she says, shaping the words slowly and carefully.

Clint rolls his eyes and resettles with a huff. “Go to sleep or I’ll tell everyone that you understand English.”

She scowls, but pulls the pillow Clint had thrown at her into her nest and obediently closes her eyes. Just as Clint had suspected, she’s exhausted and it takes only minutes after she drops her guard for her breathing to even out. 

“Think she’s asleep for real this time?” Bucky whispers, raising an eyebrow. 

Clint raises an eyebrow back at him. “Does it matter? I’m pretty sure the mood is ruined either way.”

Bucky scowls. “Ew, gross.” He shoves at Clint and Clint muffles his sniggering in his pillow.

“Guess we’ll have to pick up where we left off later,” Clint murmurs a few minutes later, once he’s gotten control of himself again. 

Bucky blinks, and his lips twitch, but there isn’t much humor in his voice when he answers, “yeah, guess so.” He’s quiet, picking at a loose thread in the blanket he’s got wrapped around himself, and he doesn’t quite look at Clint. “Steve made it sound like they’ve got a way to fix us. Or, well, Tony and Bruce are working on it, and Thor went to bring in Jane to help.”

“Yeah, I caught that in between all of the lecturing too,” Clint agrees; he’s been decidedly not thinking about it.

“Do you really think they’ll get us sorted out to-” Bucky pauses, glancing at the clock on the bedside table, “... well, today, I guess.”

Clint can’t quite explain why that question makes his stomach twist up in itself, but he does his best to ignore the sensation. “Probably,” he says, with as careless of a one shouldered shrug as he can manage. “I mean, it’s _Tony_. He’d do it just to prove he could. But to be honest I kind of stopped paying attention when he was talking about it.”

“Yeah, me too,” Bucky admits. “You know, I can handle most of his techno-babble when he’s talking about weapons, or cars, or even the robots, some. But start throwing this alien magic shit in and…” Bucky trails off and shakes his head.

“Twists my head up in knots too.” Clint grimaces, mentally shoving his previous experience with one of Thor’s so-called Infinity Stones back in the _Do Not Think About_ box, and he’s pretty sure he can see Bucky doing the same thing. 

They both lapse into silence after that. Clint fidgets, adjusting his pillow a couple of times, but Bucky is still and quiet. So much so that Clint’s almost certain that Bucky has fallen asleep until Bucky speaks up again. “What if they can’t?” Bucky asks, so quietly that Clint almost misses it. “Fix us, I mean.”

“Aw, come on,” Clint huffs, though he’s honestly a little relieved that Bucky wants to keep talking and he won’t have to pretend to go to sleep yet after all, “we’ve got like… all of the smartest people in the world working on it. They’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says slowly, “... but what if they don’t?”

“Well,” Clint considers, “I guess we stay teenagers… at least for a while. We’ll grow up again, I guess?” Clint squints at Bucky in the semi-darkness. “Is that what you want?” 

Bucky opens and closes his mouth a couple of times before finally admitting, “I don’t know. Maybe?”

Clint honestly hadn’t considered it; it had never even occurred to him that their super-genius friends wouldn’t be able to put them back to normal. But now he’s thinking about it. Now he’s thinking about it a lot, and he isn’t quite sure what to do with these thoughts. “You won’t have the serum any more,” he points out, unnecessarily, but for the sake of the conversation.

“Or the metal arm,” Bucky adds, his voice neutral. “I’d age normally. Live a natural life.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Clint mutters, “getting old isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Well, what about you?” Bucky presses. “I mean, you just said it yourself - being seventeen again could buy you, what, a couple of extra decades? Plus there’s… your hearing…” Bucky fumbles and trails off. 

“Well, maybe,” Clint corrects, “I mean, the damage is already done. Maybe, with intervention or something, it won’t go the same as it did before. But, maybe not.”

“Oh.” Bucky nods slightly. “Yeah, I guess.” Bucky goes quiet again, but he shifts. He and Clint had already been lying pretty close, their knees knocking together. But Bucky moves close enough so that their faces are within kissing distance again, which Clint tries to dismiss as a practicality of keeping their voices at a whispering level, except that Bucky reaches out - with his left hand - and curls his fingers around Clint’s under the blanket. “But it’s easier though, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” Clint’s throat feels a little dry. He can’t quite focus on Bucky’s face when they’re lying this close, so he stares at Bucky’s lips instead, watches the way Bucky’s tongue pokes out to lick them.

“The memories, the bad ones-” Bucky’s throat bobs as he swallows and he licks his lips again; Clint isn’t about to ask him to elaborate. “They’re still there, but… it’s easier, somehow, like they aren’t as close, or… or as real, maybe. It’s kind of nice.”

Clint takes a breath and nods. “Yeah, I get that,” he agrees quietly. 

Bucky’s fingers flex around Clint’s, and it’s hard to tell in the dim light, but Clint could swear that he looks a little pale. “You don’t think I’m a coward?”

Clint can’t even dignify that with a serious answer. He huffs, turning his hand over so that he can thread their fingers together properly. “Don’t be stupid,” he retorts. “Bucky, no one would judge you if you chose not to go into whatever crazy machine Team Science cooks up.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Bucky mutters, his voice low and distracted. 

They lapse into silence again; but now that Bucky’s brought it up, Clint can’t stop thinking about it, and he can’t stop his eyes from drifting back toward the foot of the bed. “What about Nat, though?” he says, not entirely meaning to say it out loud.

“Nat?” Bucky blinks, also glancing toward the foot of the bed, where Natasha is slumped sideways in her nest - definitely asleep now. 

“It could be a second chance for her.” Clint has to swallow, his throat suddenly tight - she looks so small, and so innocent curled up into a tight ball in her nest of blankets. Clint knows, rationally, exactly how deceiving looks can be, but that doesn’t loosen the knot in his chest. “A chance for a _real_ childhood.”

“You’re serious?” Bucky’s eyes are wide in the dark and Clint shrugs.

“I’m just saying,” Clint says, as nonchalantly as he can, “Those asshats had a reason for turning her into a kid again, but… we could do the opposite.”

“Give her a normal childhood?” Bucky raises a skeptical eyebrow. “In a billionaire’s oversized frat house full of superheroes and spies?”

 Clint shrugs. “We can’t possibly do worse than the Red Room did,” he points out.

“Point,” Bucky concedes.  “Problem is,” he continues, musing quietly, “you and I, we know what’s up. We can make an informed decision. But-” Bucky bites his lower lip and even in the dim light of the room Clint can see him turning the thought over in his mind. “You are right though, we could give her a good childhood… a better life.” 

“Yeah,” Clint nods. He tells himself that it’s too late - and too early, at the same time - that he’s tired, too many ups and downs and too much excitement in the past thirty-six hours. That’s why he feels inexplicably cold even under the blankets, why the pit of his stomach feels like it’s full of lead, and why it’s okay to wiggle forward enough to rest his head on Bucky’s shoulder. “The thing is, I think we both know Nat wouldn’t want that,” he says into the soft fabric of Bucky’s t-shirt. 

Bucky doesn’t answer, he just sighs and wraps his arms tighter around Clint and presses a kiss into his hair.

***** 

Clint wakes up six hours later, alone in bed. He feels sticky and groggy, but not nearly as close to death as a night like that would have left him two days ago. Nevertheless, he takes his time dragging himself through a shower and into some fresh clothes. When he leaves his room he beelines it for the coffee machine, burying himself in the largest mug he can find. 

It’s not until he finally emerges from the coffee mug that he realizes he’s not alone on the common floor. Sam and Thor are apparently attempting to engage Natasha in some board game at the kitchen table; Natasha, for her part, looks bored and unamused.

There’s no sign of Bucky.

Clint doesn’t ask. He makes himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - which he ends up giving half of to Natasha. He tolerates Sam’s teasing about their wild teenage shenanigans the night before, and Thor’s laments about missing out. Clint tries to retaliate against Sam’s teasing by making snide comments to Natasha in Russian, but it’s a lot less fun with Thor and his Allspeak powers around. Clint eventually convinces them to give up on the board game in favor of poker; which turns out to be an absolutely terrible idea, because - to no one’s surprise - junior Natasha is already terrifyingly good at it.

 Throughout the afternoon and evening various members of the Science Brigade wonder in and out for coffee and snacks, all of them looking frazzled and manic by turns. Tony is adamant that the “reverse cocoon machine” will be ready by the next morning, Bruce mutters something Clint only half hears about energy spikes and redundancies, and… frankly, whatever Jane says probably isn’t proper English and Clint isn’t even going to try.

Maria and Pepper appear in time for dinner with a small feast of roast chicken, potatoes, and veggies; Pepper declares that Natasha should get at least _some_ food with actual nutritional value. Maria takes several portions down to the labs, and the rest of them pass dinner in relative quiet.

The rest of the evening is spent grouped around in the living room, bickering over movies and games. There’s no sign of Bucky, or of Steve. Clint doesn’t say anything, but he can’t help fiddling with his phone, opening and closing his text messaging app repeatedly without ever actually sending anything. There’s an awkward sort of forced normalcy hanging over the room, like everyone is trying just a little bit too hard to pretend nothing is going on.

Natasha, for the most part, stays quiet and withdrawn, tucked up on the couch next to Clint and still pretending not to understand English. And when Clint gives up, deciding to call it a night, she gets up without a word and follows him. She makes no pretenses about rebuilding her nest at the foot of Clint’s bed, and Clint leaves her to it. He takes another shower, just to kill time. By the time he flops into bed, Natasha is settled into her nest and blinking owlishly at him.

 "Тебе страшно?" she asks, her voice quiet and small as she hugs the blanket a little closer.

Clint stops, but he doesn’t question what she’s talking about; he knows better than to ever underestimate Natasha, no matter how old she is. “Shitless,” he answers.

He doesn’t think either of them sleeps much, but they don’t talk again.

*****

It’s mid-morning when they’re summoned down to the labs. There’s what looks like a generator mixed with a bomb and fed through someone’s surrealist nightmare set up inside of one of the “Hulk-proof panic rooms”. The center of the contraption is glowing a neon green color and pulsing at a slow, almost nauseating tempo.

Clint doesn’t realize that he’s been completely zoned out, staring at the pulsing light instead of listening to the conversation around him until a small cold hand slips into his, jerking him back to the present sharply. Natasha stares up at him, looking determined, and Clint forces a small smile for her. Steve’s there, looming at the edges of the room with Sam, Thor, and Maria.

Bucky isn’t.

“Right, so,” Tony says, clapping his hands together and looking far too excited and sleep deprived for Clint’s liking. “Good news/bad news, the… green stone is MIA, so we don’t have to deal with that yet. In the meantime, we have one magic-age-changing battery pack, courtesy of Red Room Redeux, Peru branch - that’s another thing we’re going to be dealing with later, fun times. But, we’ve only got one, which means… good luck.”

“We’ve reverse engineered the original machine,” Bruce says, probably trying to sound reassuring, although Clint can’t tell for certain who he’s trying to reassure. “And adjusted it. So, it… should put you back to your original ages with no side effects.”

“I’ve run all of the numbers about a hundred times,” Janes adds helpfully. “It will definitely work… probably.”

“Good enough for me. Let’s do this.” Bucky’s entrance doesn’t quite have the flair that Tony demands or comes innately to Thor, but he achieves a peak level of drama nonetheless. No one looks surprised, except for Clint, though Steve has that constipated half-relieved, half-freaked out expression on his face again.

“You heard the man, on with the show!” Tony declares, clapping his hands together a little too gleefully.

Clint mostly watches Bucky as they’re bundled into the room with the machine. There are little X’s made of tape on the floor, one right next to the machine and two more at the edge.

“We’ve measured these exactly, based on where you were each standing during the original… incident,” Bruce explains, trying to nudge Natasha onto the X closest to the machine. She eyes Bruce, the X, and the machine all with a level of wary trepidation, but she stands on it compliantly, her arms crossed tight over her chest.

“Just… just stand exactly there,” Bruce insists as he backs out of the room. “It’ll be fine.”

“My confidence is waning,” Bucky mutters, taking his place half a step behind Clint. They’re standing close enough that if Clint leans back a little he can feel the heat of Bucky’s chest through their shirts. Clint remembers vividly the strength of Bucky’s metal hand trying to yank him backwards just before the first bomb had exploded-

“Are you sure about this?” Clint asks quietly. He can only just see Bucky in the periphery of his vision, but as far as he can tell Bucky seems a lot more relaxed than Natasha looks or Clint feels. “You don’t have to, you know.”

“I want to.” Bucky reaches out, his fingertips just barely brushing the back of Clint’s shirt and Clint can’t quite suppress a slight shiver. Clint listens to Bucky take a slow, deep breath, the sound just barely audible over the machine revving up in front of them. “The serum, the arm… a lot of bad came with them the first time. But they’re mine now, a part of me. And this time it’s my choice.”

Clint nods. On impulse he reaches back and finds Bucky’s hand, threading their fingers together and squeezing slightly. “Back to adulting it is, then,” Clint says.

Bucky has just enough time to snort before the machine goes off.

*****

Bucky really appreciates that Clint somehow managed not to fall _on top_ of him this time. The nauseating-head ringing-dizziness is uncomfortably familiar, which maybe is what allows Bucky to shake it off so quickly. He rolls to his feet, bracing himself against the wall he’d gotten blown back into for a minute as he assess the room; Clint is crawling around on the floor and swearing under his breath, while over in the center of the room Natasha is slowly sitting up and scowling at the smoking remains of the machine.

Bucky takes a careful breath, pushing himself away from the wall and over to Clint. He holds out his metal hand when Clint steadies himself enough to look up. Clint accepts the offered hand and Bucky hoists him to his feet, even though the motion threatens to send them both toppling back over.

 _Guess it worked_ , Clint signs, taking his turn to lean back against the smooth Hulk-proof wall behind them and grin crookedly at Bucky.

Bucky withdraws his hand, flexing the metal fingers one by one and nods. He feels like he should say something, but his throat feels swollen shut and he has no idea what he would say if he could speak anyway. Luckily, a sound draws his attention, and he glances over his shoulder to where Natasha has begun to pick herself up off of the floor. Someone - probably Sam - had had the foresight to dress her in a large, loose hospital-type gown, and she wrinkles her nose as she straightens it out and brushes her hair back from her face.

“Hey there, pipsqueak,” Clint says with a shit eating grin. His voice is pitched just a little too loud, and he clearly has absolutely no regard left for his life.

Natasha scowls at him, stalking across the short distance toward them; Bucky instinctively steps out of the way to give her a clear shot at Clint. But she stops half a foot in front of him, her hands on her hips, and considering the fact that she was a kid for less than forty-eight hours, it shouldn’t be quite so disconcerting that she’s slightly taller than them again, and yet, hilariously, it is. “You are the absolute worst babysitters,” she declares, glancing between Clint and Bucky, but making sure to enunciate clearly in Clint’s direction.

Clint smirks, unrepentant, and Natasha rolls her eyes. She leans in, kissing first Clint’s cheek, then Bucky’s. “Спасибо,” she says quietly, her voice low and sincere as she holds each of their gazes in turn for a beat before turning sharply on her heel and leaving the room. The others are grouped around the doorway, practically climbing on top of each other to peer inside and gawk at the three of them, but the fall back and part easily for Natasha as she stalks out.

 _Time to get poked again_ , Bucky signs ruefully before reluctantly. He turns for the door, intending to follow the gaggle of their friends who in turn are trailing after Natasha. But Clint reaches out and grabs his arm, stopping him in his tracks. Startled, Bucky turns back to Clint with an expectantly raised eyebrow.

Clint swallows and licks his lips, staring at Bucky a little too intensely. “About the other night-” Clint starts, speaking slowly and carefully modulating his voice as he stares at Bucky.

Bucky’s heart flips over in his chest; a fringe benefit of spending the past day trying to sort out his feelings about letting Team Science re-age him again had been avoiding exactly this conversation. But, the other fringe benefit is that he’s had plenty of time to figure out how he intends to _respond_ to this conversation. He doesn’t give Clint a chance to continue, and doesn’t bother with words. Instead he crowds in the extra step between them, cups Clint’s face in both hands, and kisses him. To Bucky’s absolute relief, Clint groans and kisses back eagerly, his hands clutching automatically at Bucky’s shirt.

“So, not just teenage hormones then,” Clint mutters, sounding as relieved as Bucky feels and his voice cracking a little when they eventually break the kiss.

“Apparently not,” Bucky confirms, mirroring Clint’s crooked grin. He has every intention of kissing Clint again - he has a lot of intentions about kissing Clint again on a regular basis - except that unfortunately they have post-science check ups to get to and naturally Natasha is not going to let them forget that.

“Are you assholes coming of not?” Her shout floats back down the hallway toward them, just as they’re both leaning in to continue with the _significantly_ more fun kissing activity.

Bucky wrinkles his nose ruefully at Clint and reluctantly pulls away. “Cock blocked again,” he jokes.

“She’s going to make a habit of that,” Clint grumbles, letting Bucky drag him after the others. “I’d fucking better not catch you in my vents again, Widow!” he shouts after Natasha’s retreating back.

Natasha just laughs, flipping them the bird over her shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> "Где я?" - Where am I?  
> "Всё в порядке,” - Everything is alright  
> "Мы твои друзья." - We are friends.  
> "Вы кто такие?" - Who are you?  
> "Отставить." - Stand down  
> "Каков приказ?" - Orders?  
> "Убери ножи." - Put down the knives  
> "Спрячь когти, паучок. Они здесь не нужны.” - Put away your stingers, little spider. You don’t need them here.  
> "Гнездо сожгли?" - The nest is burned?  
> "Дотла." - To the ground  
> "Здесь ты в безопасности." - You are safe here.  
> "Где мы?" - Where are we?  
> "В Нью-Йорке," - New York  
> "Красной Комнаты здесь нет. Твои операторы не найдут тебя.” - There is no Red Room here. Your old handlers cannot find you.  
> "Никуда не уходи," - Don’t go anywhere  
> "Звучит неплохо, а?" - Sounds fun, yes?  
> "Я залезу до потолка!" - I can reach the top!  
> "Конечно, залезешь." - I’m sure you can  
> "Погоди минутку,” - Wait, hold on  
> "Надо страховку надеть.” - Safety first  
> "Теперь я." - My turn  
> "Хочешь драться, котенок?" - You want to wrestle, kitten?  
> "Я тебя уложу,” - I will beat you  
> "Я самая сильная!" - I am strongest!  
> “Да ты что? Ну, посмотрим.” - Yeah? We’ll see about that.  
> "Только страховку снимем,” - Let’s get this off first  
> "Хватит!” - Enough!  
> "Ладно,” - Okay  
> "С чего хочешь начать?" - What do you want to try first?  
> "Это тест?" - Is this a test?  
> "Ты что, нет!" - No, definitely not!  
> "Вот, попробуй.” - Here, try these.  
> “Бакланы,” - dorks  
> "Мы не сердимся," - We’re not mad at you  
> "Тебе страшно?" - Are you scared?  
> “Спасибо,” - Thank you

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art: 2017 WinterHawk Reverse Big Bang Piece Two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980631) by [sian1359](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian1359/pseuds/sian1359)




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